Doki Doki Space Chronicles
by Kavoc
Summary: The members of the Doki Doki Literature Club find themselves in space in this sci-fi action adventure.
1. Ohayou Lt Sayori

He finds himself drifting through nothingness. Darkness all around him. Has he stopped existing? Did he even exist to begin with? He can almost remember their names, but they too have faded into nothingness. ãûëōĵ, êŷƁü, ĪōƁĝǔ, ŪäèƆɉɐ. What now? This can't be it, can it?

The young brown haired boy wakes up in bed, in a high-tech room aboard a spaceship of some sort. "What the hell...?" he asks himself. Still a bit taken back by that weird dream. "Ah shit." he says looking at the clock. The briefing is at 11:00 and it's 10:58. He needs to hurry, or he'll be late. He puts on his uniform and makes his way out of his room and down the corridor pass various other crew members. However, he's not rushing down the hall like he should. He's still in a dazes over that dream.

"Heeeeeeyyyyyyy!" He hears coming from behind him, snapping him out of his stupor. He sees an annoying girl running at him from a distance, waving her arms in the air like she's totally oblivious to any attention she might draw to herself. That girl is Sayori, his neighbor and good friend since they were children. Not the kind of friend he'd see himself making today, but it just sort of works out because they've known each other for so long.

Both of them went through training an induction together to become Galactic Enforcers. The galaxy's top peacekeeping force. Both in were assigned to serve aboard the great ship Iretuare. They've served together for only a short period of time now. However, if she's gonna chase him like this, he almost feels better off just running away, however he just sighs and idles in the hallway, and lets Sayori catch up with him.

"There you are." She says.

"Hey." he simply replies. "Looks like we're both gonna be late."

"Yeah..." She admits embarrassed.

"Aren't you suppose to be giving the briefing today?" He inquires. "I'm a little disappointed. With something like this, you really should try to be a little more on time."

"I know..." she says shamefully.

"Come on. Let's both hurry." he says, coaxing her along. As they move towards the conference room, the area becomes speckled with other crew members, gathered around waiting for a briefing that should have started almost 5 minutes ago.

The room is filled with a large number of young crew members chatting to each other. "Okay everyone. Um...listen up...please." Sayori says nervously standing at the front of the room, on an elevated platform in front of a large computer screen and console. "As you all know, our captain is busy at the moment, and doesn't wish to be disturbed. So I will be giving the briefing today...in the stead of the captain." She says nervously fumbling her own grammar. "Ummm...right. So let's get down to business."

"As you know, there has been a new threat that in our galaxy, that has threatened the peace, integrity, and...peace of our galaxy." She clearly did not practice this first. "The Space emporiums know as Queen Zyria has risen to power almost overnight. This threat has come out almost nowhere. She came into power almost overnight. Umm...and she has an entire army of robots at her command. "She says as she brings up images of various robots on the large screen.

"We believe she as achieved this by some sort of power that has allowed her to manipulate the very fabric of reality. At the moment, her motives are unknown. However her forces have been attacking other Galactic Enforcer ships. She we can assume she is up to...um...pretty bad stuff. Right now we are attempting to pinpoint her location before another attack occurs. We are close to a breakthrough. Until then, be on your guard. That is all." She says dismissing the room.

She leaves the room as well and breaths a sigh of relief. "Not exactly as smooth as it should have been." He tells her.

"I didn't think it I would have gotten the butterflies as bad as I did. I always have a hard time giving speeches in front of large crowds like that." Sayori replies. She is the First Lieutenant and second in command aboard the Iretuare. How she got to her rank is a bit beyond anyone. She's awfully green. Then again so is almost everyone aboard this ship. Most people have seen little to no action.

"Well now that that is over, how bout we grab something to eat in the mess hall?" She says invitingly.

"Nah, I'm not really hungry." he says.

"Have you had anything to eat yet today?" she inquires.

"Not really."

"It's bad to miss breakfast." She replies. "I don't want to see you get all tired and sluggish."

"I'm fine." He says dismissively he's still in a mood over that dream he had. Suddenly Sayori gets serious and say

"Go to the mess get yourself something to eat. That's an order." He lets out a long exasperated sigh.

"Fine. If you insist." Friend or not, Sayori is still his superior. She's second in command, and he's just a lowly grunt. So an order's an order. On that note, they make their way to the mess hall.

Meanwhile elsewhere in a dark regain of the galaxy a shadowy figure sets in an office room aboard a large space fortress. "Queen Zyria." A humanoid robot enters the room and addresses a young woman setting in a chair behind a desk. "How goes the search?" she asks. "The last two ships we engaged didn't contain our person of interest." "Are you sure about that information we received?" she asks. "We know they're aboard a Galactic Enforcer ship somewhere. However the details after that are a bit dodgy. We don't know anything about our target at this point. We don't even know if our target is a boy or a girl at this point. Finding them won't be easy" The robot goes on to say. "We need to be absolutely sure next time. We can't afford to draw too much attention to ourselves at this point. It's crucial that we find them, before they find us." She insists.


	2. Cupcakes and Catastrophe

Sometime later, our hero and Sayori find themselves setting down eating a very late breakfast in the mess hall. He was a lot hungrier than he thought he was. "Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom really quick." Sayori says as she gets up and leaves him by himself. He's already finished his bacon and eggs, but he's still a little hungry. He gets up and notices that there are cupcakes available. He makes his way over to them, and picks one up. They're very plain unassuming cupcakes, with pink icing. Suddenly he has a thought: What if they had little kitty cat faces on them? That would be great.

Suddenly someone approaches him from behind. "Hey there... Um... you don't mind if I take one of those up cakes do you?" She says bashfully. He turns around to see a tall lengthy purple haired girl standing behind him. He didn't realize he was blocking her path.

"Oh not at all...sorry." He says moving out of her way. She grabs one of the cupcakes and puts it on her tray.

"So are you new here? I don't think we've met." She inquires.

"Yeah, I was just assigned here a few days ago." He answers. He's still not completely familiar with the entire ship and its crew. Come to think of it, he hasn't even met the captain in person yet.

"I'm Yuri" She says. Before he can introduce himself, Sayori comes over to him.

"There you are." She says.

"Oh hey. I was just talking to Yuri here." He replies.

"Oh yes. Yuri here is our head engineer. Probably one of the smartest crew members aboard the Iretuare." Sayori says.

"D-don't say things like that...please." Yuri says, bashfully; humbled Sayori's statement.

"Lieutenant Sayori." A young male crew member comes over with a clipboard. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I had some things I needed you to go over with you." He says

"Oh... Okay. Sure." She replies "Sorry, I have to take this."

"No, it's okay. I understand." Our hero says.

"Yuri was going to work on the ship's hyperspace drive. Why don't you give her a hand for now?" She suggests.

"Sure I guess" he says, not totally certain that he would be of any help. With that Sayori and the crew member leave. Leaving Yuri and our hero by themselves. Both of them leave the mess hall after eating their cupcakes.

* * *

Meanwhile: Queen Zyria sits in an office as a humanoid robot comes on over a big screen display. "My Queen."

"What is it?" She says.

"We have a new lead for our target. A small scouting ship on the far corner of the galaxy." He then brings up an image of the Iretuare on the screen. She narrows her eyes at it. She's confident that the one she is looking for is aboard this ship; she can feel it.

"What are your orders?" He asks.

"Do we have any ships nearby?" she relies.

"We only have one in the general vicinity; the Undertaker, but it's a heavy artillery ship. It should be more than enough to take out a small ship like that."

"Very well. Move in and prepare to strike with everything you got. We must irradiate our target effective-immediately." She orders.

"By your command, my queen."

* * *

Our hero and Yuri begin to make their way to the ship's engine room. "So have you had any experience working with Quantum Warp-drive equipment before?" She asks.

"Well...I read a book about it once." He says. But really what he means by that, is that he's read sci-fi manga before.

"Don't you think it's amazing how the X-278 is so vastly superior in its ability to travel hyperspace, by utilizing space-time compression, compared to its predecessors; the X-277 and the X-276?" She asks.

"Um...Yeah. I suppose it is." He tries desperately to grasp anything related to the matter on a level that he could understand, but is coming up with nothing. Yuri might as well be having a conversation with a rock right now.

They arrive at the engine room. As they walk through, there are lots of high tech machinery and other things that he has no idea what they are. Eventually they make their way to a large egg shaped machine and Yuri begins working on it. Our hero mostly just stands around and lets her do the work; occasionally handing her a tool. "This will mostly just be a minor tuneup." She explains.

"Something to help its efficiency." Suddenly she looks around as if she can't find something.

"Hold on one sec. I forgot the needle-nose pliers." She gets up and leaves the room.

He sits there by himself. Bored. He looks at the hyperspace drive, and the part Yuri was working on. He toys with the idea of tinkering with it himself. I mean- how hard could it be? Maybe he could even impress Yuri, and a girl that smart and pretty is definitely worth impressing. On that note he begins fiddling around with it. He pulls on a large wire, it disconnects and a small part connected to it comes off with it. The machine makes an unpleasant noise for a short period of time. He recoils, then he gets a sinking feeling in his stomach that he may have just done something that he shouldn't have. He tries to tell himself not to worry; that it's no big deal, and that Yuri could probably fix it real easy when she gets back.

Back at the ship, Our hero anxiously awaits Yuri to return, ready to face a slew of consequences for his reckless actions. Soon the purple haired girl returns. "Hey, sorry it took so long. Someone misplaced my pliers" She says, slowly approaching him. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting." She continues.

"N-no. Not at all." He says. He then diverts his eyes to the floor. "Look...um...while you gone-" Suddenly something causes the whole ship to quake, causing them both to stagger. Then alarms go off.

"What the hell?" he says. The captain then comes on over the PA system. "Attention everyone. We're under attack by and enemy vessel. Man your stations, and prepare for battle."

"We have to get to the command Room" Yuri says.

"I'm right behind you." With that they take off towards the command room.


	3. Doki Doki Panic

Seconds later, Yuri and our hero arrive at the command room. There are various personnel working numerous consoles. Sayori is already there trying to get a handle on the situation.

"There you guys are." Sayori says.

"What's going on?" he asks.

"We're under attack by a large enemy war ship. We believe this to be one of Queen Zyria's vessels. We're currently taking evasive action. The captain should be here at any minute." Sayori responds.

Suddenly another large crash hits the ship. The captain then comes on over the room's communications system with some bad news. "I'm not gonna be able to make it to the command room. The corridor leading me there was depressurized from that last attack."

Sayori then replies "Can you find an alternate route?"

"Negative Lieutenant. It will take too long. I'll just have to give orders from here using the ship's communications system. What's the situation?"

One of the crew members at a console responds "We are greatly outgunned. The enemy ship is a heavy artillery ship, where as ours is just a scouting vessel. Not only that but the enemy's speed is a near match to ours; we can't out run them in conventional space"

"What about Hyper-space?" The captain asks.

Yuri replies "Our X-278 Hyper-space drive should be more than enough to outrun that thing. Heavier ships like that don't usually have anything nearly as fast as what we have."

"Okay. Make the jump to hyper-space, and let's get out of here." The captain order.

"Roger that." A crew member simply replies.

They attempt to make the jump, but an error message comes up on screen. "What's going on?" Sayori asks.

"Sir. Something's wrong. Our hyper-space drive isn't responding." A crew member says.

Our hero; frustrated speaks up "Why the hell n-" He stops himself mid-sentence after coming to a bone chilling realization.

"I don't understand." Yuri says "I was only doing a basic Tune-up. I never disconnected anything crucial." She continues. Suddenly another attack rocks the ship. Sayori then asks "Have you tried radioing for backup?"

"Our closest Galactic Enforcer ship is about a 4 day hyper-space jump from us." A crew member then replies.

The captain then comes to a conclusion. "Looks like we have no choice but to take them on by ourselves. Race ahead of the enemy and start firing the the rear light artillery." The Iretuare takes off with the large ship, the Undertaker in pursuit.

Sayori turns to Yuri. "Yuri. Get back down to the engine room and fix the Hyper-space drive."

"Okay, but should I take a team with me or anything?"

"That shouldn't be an issue. Get going."

"Yes sir." Yuri then takes off back towards the engine room, only to see that the shorter way that she came from has been sealed off, do to part of the corridor being depressurized. This must be what was holding off the captain. She will just have to take the long way, although it will take awhile to get there.

Meanwhile the ship is still racing in front of the Undertaker. The captain then speaks up. "Engines to max power, and charge the Proton blast cannons. I have a plan."

"Right." everyone says. They continue racing through space; not gaining any distance between them and the opposing ship. "Captain the cannon is at 92% max capacity."

"Wait for it." The captain says... "OKAY! NOW! KILL THE ENGINE! ACTIVATE REVERSE THRUSTERS AND CONVERTE REMAINING POWER TO THE PROTON BLAST CANNONS!" The captain commands. With that the Ship stops dead in its tracks, and the enemy ship flies past it. The Iretuare then fires its cannon at the Undertaker's thrusters. The ship then loses control and starts veering towards a large asteroid as it begins to blow up and fall apart. But right before crashes and explodes, it shoots two metal pods from that fly towards the Iretuare.

Everyone starts to celebrate. "Great job, everyone." Says the captain. But just then, their victory celebration is cut short as another crew member speaks up.

"Something just hit our ship." She says. "It appears to be two metal pods. I don't kn- wait they're opening up; something's coming out of them." She brings an image up on a large screen for everyone to see. Numerous robots in various shapes and sizes start leaving the pod and attack the haul of the ship.

"This is not good." Says a crew member. "Our ship doesn't have any perimeter defenses. They'll be through in a matter of minutes."

"This is bad." Sayori say. "Yuri is still making her way towards the engine room."

Suddenly our hero clenches his fist and gets a serious look on his face, and growls "I'm going out there." he says and then immediately takes off running.

"Wait!" Sayori says, but to no avail; he's already made up his mind.

Suddenly the captain comes on "No. He's right. Go out there with him, and help him out. I can handle things from here."

"Yes. Understood." Sayori says. She too then takes off.

Seconds later Sayori meets our hero in the armory next to the airlock. He's wearing an armored spacesuit, and grabbing up a laser rifle.

"Hey." She says getting his attention. "I'm coming with you."

He smiles and nods, then simply says "Right."

Sayori then speaks up "If you get the ones near the front of the ship, I'll get the ones near the back. Also be careful out there. That's an order"

"Roger that." He says. He then grabs up a high energy blade. It's made of metal, yet still capable of cutting straight through other alloys. He then sheaths it across his back. He then presses a button on his suit that encloses his head in a helmet, and heads out the airlock. Sayori then arms herself and follows in suit. 

* * *

Meanwhile: "I thought you said the Undertaker was more than enough to take out that ship!" Queen Zyria argues.

"Well...I mean...I thought...it was pretty strong." Her robot assistant says nervously.

"Well we have to stop them before they get away. Do we have any other forces close by their position?" She asks.

"According to my readings, we have a platoon of heavy ships that's about a 20 minute hyper-space jump from their location."

"Very well. Sent them over and eradicate them before they can escape." Zyria orders.

"Yes my Queen." he replies.


	4. Rage Against the Machines

Outside the ship along its haul, our hero and Sayori split up. He then comes across some smaller robots. Crab-like in appearance, with extendable claws. They're ripping up various parts of the ship. "GET THE HELL OFF MY SHIP!" he roars. He then pegs a few with his laser rifle. Some of them try to grab at him but he easily dodges, and slices them up with his blade. But then he comes across a two bipedal robots standing at 10 feet tall, with laser guns on their arm, and wrist mounted blades on the other. They begin firing at him and he runs around them dodging the attacks and deflecting a few shots with his blade. He then takes cover behind a piece of metal.

As they surround it, he dives up into space and lands behind one with his blade out, slicing it in half. The second one tries to get a shot on him, but he then shoots its laser arm off. But then it proceeds to kick him in the chest, sending him flying along the haul of the ship. It definitely did some damage. "Dammit." he says, then coughs a bit, and looks up to see it charging towards him. He immediately get back on his feet. He tries to fire his rifle, but it's out of juice.

As it draws near, it swings its bladed arm at him. He dodges in the nick of time, leaping a good distance away. He then charges towards it with "Haaaaaaaah!" he yells. As he comes in close. It swings at him with its blade only to have him duck the attack and run pass its leg, clipping it with his blade. It then falls to its knees, he jumps on its back and stabs his sword through the top of its head, finishing it off.

He stands there triumphantly, breathing heavily. He then gets a twinge of pain in his chest. He's a little sore, but okay. He then radio's Sayori. "I've eliminated all the enemies on my end? How's it going over there?" Sayori then says "I'm still engaged in combat with a few more enemy units." As she says that a panther like robot jumps at her. She dodges it and takes its legs off mid-leap with a blade similar to what our hero had, then stabs it through the head, then fires her laser rifle at another one before it can come in close.

"Right. I'm coming over to help." but before he can get through that thought, he suddenly turns around and is met by a giant robotic snake. He aims his rifle at it, but before he can fire, it smacks it out of his hands. It then lunges its mouth at him. He barely has time to dodge. It sinks its teeth into the side of the ship. While it's biting down he runs towards it and takes out one of its eyes with his blade. It lets up and recoils in pain. He then runs towards it and leaps through the space with the intent to finish it off, but as he makes his jump, the snake's tail comes in from behind and strikes him in the back, sending him crashing back down into the side of the ship. It then picks him up with its tail in a tight grip, causing him to yell out in pain "GAAAAAAAH!"

Sayori finishes off the rest of the smaller robots, when she comes across a large robot with a few smaller robots accompanying it. They are just about through to the inside of the ship. She has to stop them before they make it in. They haven't noticed her yet so she could easily get the drop on them, but before she makes a move, our hero's cries of agony come on over her communications. "Hey what's going on? Are you okay?" she asks, getting no response, other more painful noise. The robots she's looking at are almost through the ships haul, but at the same time, if she doesn't go now, our hero might be done for. Conflicted, she turns runs back towards our hero's location to help.

The giant robot snake holds our hero with its tail then slams him against the side of the ship. It then opens its jaws with the intent to finish him off. But then several lasers tear through its neck, as Sayori then jumps through the air and dropkick's its head the rest of the way off. As it's grip loosens on our hero he falls to the ground. Sayori runs over to him. "Hey. Are you okay!? Answer me!"

"Define...okay." he says breathing heavily. He's in pretty bad shape, but more so he seems to be having problems breathing. Sayori then makes a grim discovery. His Oxygen tank has been pierced. It's just his tank; his space suit is fine, so there's no chance of exposure, but he'll run out of air in a matter of seconds.

"We have to get you inside Now!" She says sternly. She then hoists him up and carries him back over to the airlock. She has no time to deal with those robots that made it into the ship. He coughs blood into his helmet. As they make their way back in he begins to lose consciousness "Hey! Come on! Stay with me!" She says. As they make it back into the ship, everything goes dark.

Meanwhile, a large centaur-like robot, and several crab like robots make their way into the interior of the ship. An emergency airlock starts to close, but then the centaur-like robot holds it open, and lets the other robots go through. It then makes it through itself. As the airlock closes behind it, it and the rest of the robots make their way through the ship's corridor.


	5. Disarmed Retreat

Meanwhile, Yuri is making her way to the engine room when suddenly the captain comes on over her communications device "Yuri. Have you fixed the hyper-space drive yet?"

"No, but I'm almost to the engine room." She replies.  
"Please hurry. I don't want to alarm you, but we've detected a fleet of enemy reinforcements traveling through hyper-space towards our location. We have about 15 minutes till we're overrun." The captain says.  
"I see. I'll try to work as fast as I c-" Before she can finish that sentence, she comes to a large, open corridor area just outside the engine room, only to be met by several robots.

They notice Yuri and start moving towards her. She then pulls out two daggers, with similar properties to the Blade our hero was wielding. She holds them in an underhanded manner. One of the crabs jump at her. She dodges and takes its claw off with one dagger then stabs it in the head with another. Another crab opens up one of its claws and starts firing lasers at her. She deflects most of them, but gets grazed by one. She then closes the gap, and slides underneath it; holding out one of her daggers and clipping one set of its legs, as she slides past. As the creature falls on its side, she gashes her dagger across its head, finishing it off. One more then tries to grab at her, only to have her dodge and kick it in the face. As it stumbles back she throws her dagger into its face, and finishes it off as well.

All three of them have been defeated. She puts her hand on her side, One of the lasers got her a bit, but it's not bad. She then retrieves her other dagger, and opens the bay doors to the engine room. But before she can go in, she hears the sound of ominous sound of metal clopping. She turns around to see a robotic centaur entering the bay area before the engine room. It then pulls out a high-tech halberd. This thing is intimidating, but it needs to be dispatched of before she can work on the hyper-space drive. She nervously pulls her daggers back out, and stares it down.

It runs at her and swings downward at her. She dodges, but before she can do anything else, it comes back up and grazes her across the stomach. It then tries to stab her with the spearhead of the halberd, but she parries it and gashes it across the horse part of the body. She then goes in for a stab, but it blocks her attack. It then diverts her dagger, and blunts her in the face with the shaft of the halberd, knocking her to the ground with a bloody nose. She looks up to see an ax blade coming straight towards her. She has just enough time to roll out of the way, as the blade gets stuck in the ground. She takes this opportunity to hop on its horseback, and tears into its human back with both daggers.

She hops off of it as it falls to the ground. It looks like she defeated it. But before she can evaluate the situation, someone comes on her communications. "Yuri. Enemy reinforcements are less than 5 minutes away. Is the hyper-space drive fixed yet?" She then replies. "I had to fight of some enemy droids. I'll get right on it." She then rushes into the engine room, and starts looking at the hyper-space drive. She notices the part our hero mistakenly detached. "How did this happen?" she asks herself. She then begins to puts the parts back together. But as she does that, the Centaur gets back up, and starts moving towards her.

Yuri manages to then fix the hyper-space drive. She then uses her communications device. "I've fixed the hyper-space drive we should be good to g-" she notices something behind her, but before she can turn around, it's too late. The centaur brings its halberd straight down on her and takes her left arm clean off. She lets out a bloodcurdling scream "GAAAAAAAA-"Before she can even get through that scream, the centaur buck-kicks her, sending her flying and crashing into the ship's weapons mainframe. She looks up to see the centaur coming towards her to finish the job. But thinking quickly, she slices the power cable to the weapons system, and throws it at the centaur; frying it in a brutal stream of electricity.

She lays there bleeding; breathing heavy, quivering breaths. "Yuri? What's going on? Are you okay?" One of the command room crew asks  
"I...reconnected...the... hyper-space...drive...but...I need help...I'm...in bad shape." She says weakly.  
"Don't worry, Yuri. Help's on the way, just hang in there." The crew member says. Back in the control room the captain radios in the order. "Jump to hyper-space. Now! Gets use out of here!"  
"Right away, captain." Mere moments after they flee, several ship similar to the one that attacked them before show up, only to find nothing.

* * *

Back at Queen Zyria's fortress, the space emporiums herself speaks to her assistant. "So they got away huh?" she asks.

"A thousand apologies, my Queen." He pleads. She's obviously a bit angry, but is keeping her cool. Although she's more worried than anything else at this point.  
"Well...Find them again. We already made our presence too well known at this point. It won't be long until we're discovered. You got that?"  
"Understood." He simply says.  
"Also how goes the search for the others?" She asks.  
"None of the others you've requested have been found at this point." He replies.  
"I see. Continue the search; they're out there somewhere. I know they are." She insists.  
"Yes, My Queen."

* * *

Meanwhile, hours later a shadowy figure sits in the middle of a dark room. They're in front of a high-tech console with multiple screens, pouring over images of the Iretuare's crew doing combat with the Undertaker, and its deadly combat droids. "Let's see." They say. "So there you are." They say pulling up a picture of Yuri. "And there you are as well." They continue, pulling up an image of Sayori, still in the ship without her space helmet on. "So that only leaves one possibility." They continue to comb through still images and footage, until they come across an image of our hero, the young brown haired boy. "Hmm? What's this?" They then pull up other images and footage of him. They seem a bit puzzled, yet intrigued. "Could it be?" They say. "Well, he's definitely worth keeping an eye on."


	6. Back to School

Our hero opens his eyes. He finds himself in some sort of... Japanese suburban area. But something is off about it. Pieces of his surroundings are either missing with a black outer space like abyss behind it, or composed of weird colored squares, like some sort of graphical glitch. It's quiet and there's no one around. He looks down at himself. He notices he's not wearing his Galactic Enforcer combat uniform anymore, but some sort of school uniform instead, with a brown blazer, blue pants, red tie, and a quilted vest.

He begins to walk forward, his brown dress shoes making echoed footstep noises against the pavement. He's puzzled by this place, yet it feels... familiar. He doesn't quite know what to make of it. He looks up. The sky is blue, as if daytime on an Earth like planet, but it's also a bit transparent. He's able to make out some sort of outer space like backdrop through it, with some kind of moving, pulsating energy.

"Hello?" he calls out as he wonders around. He comes across multiple dead ends. He tries opening the doors to various different buildings, yet he can't seem to access a single one, and still not a single other person to be found. However, it's not long until he comes across what appears to be a school of some sort. The sign stating the school's name however is glitched over. However, he notices a single light on in the building somewhere on the third floor. He walks over to the front door of the school. To his amazement, it opens.

The inside of the school however, it not much better for wear than the rest of this strange area. Most of the doors are shut tight, and most of the rooms lead to nothing but an abyss. He begins making his way up stairs to where he saw that light outside. As he makes his way up he can hear someone making distressed noises. "Errrr. Gah. Hmph." It sounds like a young girl. Perhaps she's in trouble or something. He then makes his down the third floor hall. This place is filling him with a while slue of different emotions. Nostalgia, dread, fear, and a slight bit of happiness.

He then comes to the noted classroom, and piers through the window on the door . He sees someone inside. It's a young pink haired girl. She's in front of a closet, attempting to reach something on the top shelf of a closet. She however is very short in stature, not being able to reach the box on a top shelf, despite her standing on a stool. He decides to open the door and come inside. The classroom appears to be in much better shape than the rest of this strange world. It even looks like a normal sunny day from outside the windows.

The girl turns around and notices him. "Can I help you?" She asks with a somewhat hostile tone. He's a bit taken back by her mean spirited attitude. He then replies

"I was just about to ask you the same thing." He replies

"Are you a new member or something?" She inquires.

"Member of what?" He asks.

"Never mind." She says dismissively. She then walks across the classroom and grabs an office chair at the teacher's desk. But before she can roll it over to the closet, he simply grabs the box she was reaching for and pulls it down.

"Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing!? I had that!" She barks. She then storms over to him. He holds out the box for her to take, and she violently snatches it from his grasp.

He then simply says "I just had a feeling that what you were doing was gonna lead to trouble."

"Well... thanks anyways." She says with a slightly nicer tone. Then sets the box on a nearby desk, and begins to open it.

"So, you mind telling me who you are, or what you're doing here?" She asks.

"Well I'm just trying to figure out where 'here' is right now. Where am I?" He Inquires.

"At School." She simply replies.

"No... I mean... What am I doing here?"

"Um... Getting an education?"

"No! That's not what I-... Never mind." He says defeated. He then notices that the box she had is full of some kind of manga series. This piques his interest a bit, seeing how he's always been a fan of manga and anime.

"So, you're into manga?" He asks.

"Yeah. So? What of it?" She says defensively.

"Well... I'm sort of into it myself." He says hesitantly.

"Yeah. That actually doesn't surprise me from some reason. I guess it's just something about you." She says as she pulls a book out of the box. Before she can say anything else, he asks her "Is your name... Natsuki?" She looks up surprised.

"How the hell did you know that? I don't ever remember telling you my name. Are you some sort of stalker, or something?" She says angrily.

"No, no, no. It's just... you look like a Natsuki. Pink hair, love of manga, and short in stat-"

"Okay, okay. I get it." She says feeling insulted about her size.

"Sorry." He says.

"Look, we have sometime before the others get here. Would you like to... read with me or something? You know... since you said you were interested in manga and stuff." she asks

"Others?" he asks. He thinks for a moment. He doesn't seem to be getting any answers out this girl. Maybe these 'others' can fill him in on what's going on. Maybe they can help him get back to where he was. However, for some reason, his memories of where he once was; the ship, the battle, the Galactic Enforcers, it's all foggy to him here in this strange realm. He can barely remember any of it.

"So you wanna read with me or not?" She asks impatiently.

"Sure. Why not?" He says. With that they set down and begin to read together. Reading through the manga, it's a series he's never heard of before. Upon first glance, he expected it to be some sort of slice-of-life series, but to his surprise, it actually seems to be an action adventure sci-fi manga. They both read on, enjoying each other's company. But then suddenly, he turns to the next page in the manga, and it's blank. At first he thinks this must be some sort of chapter heading, but then he turns the page, and the next two pages are also blank. He continues to thumb through, and it's the same thing for the entire rest of the book.

He then looks over to Natsuki. She seems sad. "Where are they? They should be here by now." she says looking at the clock. He looks up at the clock on the wall. It's digital. However, it seems to be broken or something, it says "X5:H9". It then glitches and changes to "-7:U3"

Suddenly the world around him starts to glitch out starts to fade into a dark red light, that gets darker and darker, as a loud static noise starts filling the area. He looks over at her. She doesn't seem to be reacting to any of this. "NatÜèÄĸ...?" Our hero tries to say. "I don't get it." She say. "I thought êÒþMÄñü ŌĝŏĸŁ ŧūđĂĆƅ" He can't understand her. Soon this entire world that he's in disappears in a hurricane of static and darkness.

* * *

Somewhere, Natsuki wakes up in a bed. "What...? Who...?" She mutters to herself. She sets up and puts her hand against her forehead, trying to grasp what just transpired. She's nowhere near convinced that what she just experienced was a mere dream. What could this mean? Who was that boy?


	7. A Helping Hand

"GAH!" Our hero springs awake panting, coming out of that strange dream turn nightmare. He looks around the room still panting a bit. He's in the Iretuare's medical bay. Everyone is looking at him, caught off guard by his sudden and violent awakening. "Y-you're awake." He hears coming right next to him. He turns to see Sayori sitting in a chair next to his bed. She then tears up and bit and lunges at him with a hug. "OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH! YOU HAD ME SO WORRIED! I DIDN'T KNOW IF YOU WERE GONNA MAKE IT!"

"Ow. Ow" he says, still sore.

"Sorry." Sayori say backing off and wiping her eyes.

"It's fine. It only hurts a little". He notices that he's shirtless and covered in bandages. However, he's not in as bad of shape as he thought he would be in. The medical tech in the hospital is really something.

He begins to recall everything that happened to him before he passed out. The ship battle, the fight on the side of the ship. He even still recalls that dream he had just now. "So what happened?" He asks. Sayori then collects herself and proceeds to fill him in on what happened after he lost consciousness.

"We managed to beat all of the attack droids, and retreated before enemy reinforcements arrived. However, we are now in the middle of nowhere, and even further out from our closest allied ship."

"So that means Yuri must have gotten the hyper-space drive back up and running. That's good to hear." He says, feeling relieved that she was able to fix his stupid mistake. But suddenly, Sayori diverts her eyes downward with a sad look on her face.

"What? What's wrong?" He asks

"Yuri is in the other room. She's in really bad shape." Sayori says.

"What happened?" He asks.

"While she was down in the engine room fixing the hyper-space drive, she was ambushed by several of those attack droids that managed to make their way into the ships interior. She...she lost her arm while fighting them off." Sayori says sadly. Our hero's heart drops into his stomach.

A doctor then comes over to him and Sayori. "Oh. You're awake." The doctor says.

"Doc. Where's Yuri? Is she okay?" Our hero frantically asks.

"She was in bad shape, when we got her here. She's doing a little better, but we weren't able to reattach her arm, unfortunately." The doctor tells him bluntly. He is overcome with a soul crushing guilt. He feels like this is all his fault. That if he didn't break the hyper-space drive, Yuri wouldn't have had to go down there, and none of this would have happened.

"Hey doc, is it okay if we can go in and see her?" He simply asks.

"Sure. She should be well enough for visitors." The doctor says, then walks off. "You go on ahead. I have some things I need to do." Sayori says. She then stands up and says

"I'll meet up with you later." She then walks out of the room. Our hero then gets up and puts his uniform back on. He walks over to the door that leads to the other half of the medical bay. He takes a deep breath, and opens it. He sees Yuri lying in bed. She doesn't look too terrible, but he can see that what they said was true. Her left arm is really gone.

"Um...Hi." He simply says.

"Oh. Hey." Yuri says.

"How are you doing?" He asks.

"I'm okay." She simply replies. He looks around awkwardly. "I'm...really sorry about what happened."

"It's okay. It wasn't your fault." She says. Those words cut him deep. "Besides, I'm feeling a lot better. I should be able to get back to work before too long." she says. He then sees That Yuri has some food next to her bed. It appears to be a half eaten bowl of chili. There are some individually wrapped cracks. She picks one up and attempts to get it open, but can't quite manage it with one arm.

This torments our hero. He feels like he needs to make up for what happened to her; at least in some small way.

"Here, let me get that." He says, walking over to her and opening it up for her.

"Thank you very much." She says kindly.

"No problem." He then pauses for a second. "So...if there's anything else you need. Let me know." He says.

"Thanks. You're very kind." She says with a gentle smile.

"I will probably be returning to work later. I could use some help since doing things with one arm is a lot harder than I thought, and I'm not sure when or if they'll be able to get me a cybernetic replacement anytime soon."

"Sure. I'd be happy to lend you a hand- OH! I-I-I mean...help you out." He says frantically embarrassed. She chuckles a bit.

"It's okay. I'll meet you down in the engine room in a few minutes. I'm still waiting for the doctor to come back." She says.

"Okay, see you then."

Our hero then leaves the medical bay and sighs. He can't bring himself to tell Yuri that it was was him that broke the hyper-space drive. On top of the guilt of this whole situation with Yuri, he also has that strange dream with that pink haired girl weighing on his mind. A little ways down the hall, he runs into Sayori. She's walking towards him, but she seems to be looking downwards, and hasn't noticed him. "Hey. Sayori." He calls out.

"Hmm. Oh-um...Hey." She says, snapping out of her stupor. "So how's Yuri doing?" She asks.

"Oh, she's doing a lot better." He says. He begins to walk with her down the hall.

"Sayori. Is something wrong?" He says

"No. Not at all. I just have a lot of stuff going on, what with all the repairs needed to our ship." She says, then continues. "Turns out, when we fled through hyper-space in order to get away from the enemy reinforcements, we strayed even further from our closest allied ship. We are now 7 days hyper-space away from them." She states.

"Well that figures." He says.

"I was gonna go do some damage assessment in the upper west wing of the ship. Would you like to come along?" She asks.

"Sorry, I was gonna help Yuri out in the engine room here in a minute." He replies.

"Oh...I see. That's okay." She says.

"Yeah. I'll catch you later." He says. With that he leaves her by herself.

Sayori said she was okay, but the truth is, she feels horrible about what happened to Yuri. She feels like it's her fault. Not only did she ignored Yuri's request for backup at the time, and sent her down there by herself, but she had the centaur robot in her sights. She could have finished it before it made its way into the ship. Sayori's glad that she was able to save our hero, but she wonders if she really made the right decision. These thoughts have began to bother her, but she does the only thing she can do right now. She takes a deep breath, puts on a brave face, and pushes forward with her duties as Lieutenant of the Iretuare. Yet still this cloud lingers.

* * *

Meanwhile, the shadowy figure sits in the middle of the dark room looking at more images on different monitors. "Hmm... It seems the pieces are all here." They say. "I just have to connect the dots."


	8. Repairs and Despair

Sometime later, our hero meets Yuri in the engine room. She's currently working on the ship's weapons mainframe. The same one she broke during her fight with the centaur.

"Hey, Yuri." He says.

"Oh hi there. Glad you could make it." She says.

"Oh it's not problem. Just show me what I can do to help out."

As he approaches, he begins to get a good look at the area, and all the traces of carnage leftover from the battle. All remains of the robots have been gathered up and taken to the research branch by now, but there's still evidence of what transpired. He even saw some of it in the area outside the engine room. Laser burn marks, and scratches on the metal floors and walls. Even cut marks from the high energy bladed weapons. But as he nears the weapons mainframe, he see a large dent in the metal machine, and more importantly, lots and lots of dried blood. Some of it was near the hyper-space drive, even though it had been burnt to a crisp. Which was probably what happened to Yuri's severed arm. But more so, there's a large stain of it right in front of the mainframe. He can definitely picture Yuri lying there in it, bleeding out. In fact, he can imagine it almost a little _too_ well for some reason.

"Um...You think we should clean that up a bit?" He asks, now desperately not wanting to see it anymore.

"Sure. If you want." She say.

With that, he grabs up a mop and cleans it up real quick. After that, they begin working on the mainframe. He mostly mostly holds various parts for Yuri, so she can fix them and put them back together. While they do this, they both get quite close to each other. However he takes special care as to not do anything without her guidance. He has definitely learned his lesson about tampering with things he doesn't understand. As the day goes on, they get the weapons mainframe mostly fixed, with only a few finishing touches needed. However, as they near completion, Yuri starts to look more and more pale and tired. It's clear she still hasn't fully recovered, and is pushing herself a bit.

"Okay...I just need to grab my drill and put the hatch back on." She says. She then stands up, and starts walking over to her tool set, but she stands up too quickly with a lack of blood in her system. "There...should be a flat-head in there some..." Her sentence trails off has she gets light headed and begins to faint. Our hero quickly notices this and rushes over and manages to catch her in his arms before she falls over. "Whoa-whoa-whoa! Hey! Are you alright!" He says frantically. Yuri comes to her senses and quickly realizes the position she's in with our hero wrapping his arms around her. Her face turns bright red, as she springs back on her feet.

"SORRY! SORRY!" They both say at the same time.

"I didn't mean to..." He tries to say.

"No no. It's fine. Um...thanks for...you know." She says bashfully.

"Don't push it." He pleads.

"Y-your right. I'm still feeling a little faint. Maybe I should take a break, and go to the mess hall to get something to eat." She says. "Um. Would you like to join me?" She says, inviting our hero.

"Sure. If you don't mind" He says.

They make their way to the mess hall. Our hero is the first one to get something to eat. He grabs himself a burrito, and sits down. He notices Yuri struggling to hold her tray with only one arm, so he stands back up and goes over to her. "Here, let me help you out with that." he says, grabbing the tray for her. "Thank you." she says. They both walk back over to the table and sit down. Yuri as chosen a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a glass of orange juice. Our hero takes note of the OJ.

"Orange juice, huh?" He says

"Yeah. Normally I'm more of a tea drinker, but the doctor said I need more juice to help get my strength back up from the blood loss." She says.

"It's strange. You actually sort of struck me as someone that would enjoy a cup of tea. Um... No offense or anything." He says.

"No, no. It's fine." She says "Maybe next time we can sit down together and enjoy a nice cup of tea."

"I would like that." He says with a smile.

Meanwhile, Sayori stands in the middle of the mess hall from a distance, watching them. They haven't noticed her, though. She hasn't been watching them for long, only long enough for it to paint a picture she doesn't like. She was hoping she and our hero could eat dinner together, but she doesn't wish to interfere. She lets out a sigh, and goes over to the lunch line and gets herself some meat and potatoes. She then sits down at a table all by herself. She doesn't eat too much, she mostly just sits there poking her food, lost in thought.

After our hero and Yuri get done eating they head back to the engine room to put the hatch back on the weapons mainframe. From there they put all the tools back, and call it a day.

"Thanks for all your help." Yuri says.

"No problem. I'm happy to have been of help." He says. He then diverts his gaze downwards, going back to the thought that it was his fault she lost her arm.

"Is there something wrong?" Yuri asks.

"Um... Yuri. About what happened the other day with the hyper-space drive..." He stops his sentence, and hesitates. He sort of wants to tell her about how he was the one that accidentally broke it, but he can't mustard courage to out right say it.

"I'm sorry again that you lost your arm over it." He says, backpedaling from it.

"Thank you, but it's okay. I'll be fine. You shouldn't worry yourself over me. With any luck, the medical team should have a robotic replacement for me sometime soon." Yuri says.

"Oh really? That's great." He says, feeling slightly better.

"Yeah, but I don't know when that will be." she replies.

"Oh." He says slightly discouraged.

"Anyways, we should be good for now. Try to get some rest." She says.

"Thanks. Same goes for you." He says, with a smile.

Yuri then leaves the room. Our hero then leaves out a different way. He walks past a bunch of schematics posted on a the walls, he stops to take a look at them hoping to maybe learn something that he can use to help Yuri out next time. However, he can't make heads or tails of any of it. Suddenly out of the corner of his eye, he notices one of the schematics looks completely different. But when he looks directly at it, it's just a normal schematic like the rest. But... he could have sworn that it was something else. Like a picture of someone in a room or something. He shakes his head and tries to dismiss it. Maybe he's just seeing things. It's been a long day after all. He then leave the engine room and starts walking down the hall towards the barracks. He then sees Sayori.

"Hey Sayori." He says.

"Oh... Hey." She says forcing a smile.

They begin walking together towards the barracks.

"So how's it going?" He asks.

"Good; it's going good." She says. "Repairs to the ship are coming along nicely."

"That's good to hear." He says. "Me and Yuri managed to get the weapons mainframe back up and running."

"Oh... Um.. good." Is all she says, she then goes silent for a few minutes.

"Sayori? Is everything okay?" He asks.

"Hm? Oh! Um yeah. Sorry, I guess I'm just spacing out a bit." She says.

"Well, you definitely picked the right career for it." He jokingly says, trying to lighten the mood.

"Yeah. I guess you're right." She says with a slight smile on her face.

Once they reach the Barracks, they part ways.

"I'll catch you later." He says.

"Yeah. See you later." She says.

Something about Sayori's mood bothers him greatly. He tries to not worry about it, but he can't quite shake it all the way. He goes back to his room and tries to forget about it by reading some manga and playing some games. Eventually he calls it a night a goes to sleep.


	9. Shonen Tell

Our hero once again finds himself in the strange Japanese suburban world. Like last time, he makes his way to the school, the only place in this world that seems to contain another person. Like last time, the memories of the world he was in while awake, is muddied and unclear. He has a hard time remembering it. Once he gets to the classroom from before, the young pink haired girl, Natsuki is there again. She's sitting on the floor reading manga. She then looks up at our hero from her book.

"Oh. Hey. It's you again. I don't suppose you saw the others on your way here, did you?" She says with her normal jaded tone.

"No not at all. Who are these 'others' you speak of anyways?" He asks. Calling to the fact that they seem to be the only ones in this surreal dimension. He then takes a seat next to her like last time.

"The other members of the club. ËŏďąÜĵ, ćƈŭ˙ő, and ŚƅŌäĀĸ. What? Haven't you met them yet?" She say slightly annoyed.

"Umm..." He says confused. He didn't catch any of those names.

"Well, it's fine I guess." She says dismissively.

He then just decides to read along with Natsuki like last time. Maybe these others will show up this time. Getting any sort of answers out of Natsuki seems to be an uphill battle anyways. So with that they begin. He opens up the manga from last time and picks up where he left off last time. He then gets to a certain part of the manga that seems to be some kind of back story.

It tells of some young girl that managed to obtain the reality altering powers of a god, and used her powers to bring about a lot of pain and suffering. Eventually she used her power to destroy the entire universe, but somehow the universe was then recreated. How exactly the universe was brought back anew has not yet been made clear, but it goes on to tell how this girl has returned. Although this time around it seems she has lost a majority of her godlike powers. Yet she seeks to reclaim the rest of her powers so she can destroy the new world, like she did old one.

He pauses for a second to take in what he just read. He feels a strange connection to this. Could this manga has some sort of hidden meaning to him?

"Hey, are you okay?" Natsuki asks.

"Y-yeah. It's just... why would this girl want to destroy the world?" He asks.

"I don't know. Maybe she's just a bitch? To be honest, I haven't read that far yet. I'm sure it will tell in time." She says.

"R-right." He simply says.

"So are you gonna continue reading, or are you just gonna set there spacing out?" She barks.

"Spacing out?" He say. That phrase has some sort of meaning to him.

"Sorry. You're right." He says, continuing the story.

He picks up where he left off. The story then jumps to these young space marines on a ship patrolling the galaxy. It mostly follows the story of this boy and this girl that seem very close to one another. But then the girl starts to get more and more depressed, and the guy starts to get concerned for her.

He puts the manga down and puts his hand against his face. It's like his memories from the waking world are trying to come back to him, but something about this strange realm keeps him from remembering. But at the same time, he remembers something else. Like from before, he remembers Nothingness, darkness, sadness, despair.

"Are you okay? You're starting to freak me out a bit." Natsuki says.

"It's just... a headache. That's all." He says tying not to worry her.

"Well I don't know if I can help you out much there. But I guess I could offer you something to eat. Maybe that will help. But seriously, you shouldn't go around freaking people out like this." She says.

She then stands up and walks over towards something on a desk on the other side of the room. He hears the distinct sound of aluminum foil. She then walks back over to him with a cupcake, and holds it out. "Here. I made a whole batch of these for the others, but you can have one if it'll make you stop acting all weird." She says. He gets a good look at the cupcake. It has a little cat face on it made of icing. Suddenly, something clicks in his mind. He quickly stands up, walks over to Natsuki, puts his hands on her shoulders, and looks her in the eyes.

"Natsuki! Listen to me." He says

"Hey! What do you think you're doing!? Hands off, sicko!" She says with an angry tone.

"Look. I know you from somewhere. I feel like I've somehow experienced this all before." He says sternly.

"What are you talking about?" She says, brushing his hands away.

He stops and thinks for a second.

"Where were you before you got here?" He asks her.

"At... at class?" She says with an unsure tone.

"Are you sure?"

"I... I don't know." She says looking downward. It seems her mind is just as muddled as his in this realm.

Suddenly the world around them starts to become distorted and begins to fill with white noise, just like last time. Our hero darts his eyes around, before looking back down towards the manga on the ground. "The manga!" He says. "The answer's got to be in there." He rushes over to it and picks it up. He starts frantically thumbing through, looking for the place he left off at.

"You're right." Natsuki says all of a sudden. "We _do_ know each other. But how, and from where?"

"I don't know. Dammit, where did I leave off?" Our hero says.

It's hard to concentrate with the noise and distortion, He comes to where he left off, but it's no good, the pages become blank once more. As the world starts to fade back into darkness, he turns back around to Natsuki.

"ŐƀĴãëùĪ!" He tries to call out her name. The world then once again disappears.

* * *

Suddenly, Natsuki wakes up in bed. She sets up in bed and reflects on what happened. "Again? There's no way this is coincidence. I have to find out who that was, and get ahold of them somehow." She says.


	10. A Stern Talking

Our hero walks down the corridor of the barracks, having just woken up and gotten dress mere moments ago. But the dream he just had still weighs on his mind. It was even more real to him than last time. What could it mean? Where has he seen this Natsuki girl before? Was his dream trying to tell him something? Yuri made mention of needing his help again. He was gonna meet up with her near the research facility. Most of the ship has been repaired at this point, but there are still a few minor repairs that need to be made. As me makes his way through the ship, he notices that he hasn't bumped into Sayori as of yet. Usually he sees her by now. He makes his way to the door outside the research facility. He sees Yuri come out.

"Hey." He says. Yuri looks up at him and smiles sweetly.

"Oh hi. Glad you could make it." She says.

"So what did you need help today?" He asks.

"Well I need to repair part of the thrusters on the outside of the ship. They got damaged in the attack." She says.

"You can count on me. By the way Yuri, have you seen Sayori anywhere?" He asks.

"Yes, the lieutenant had to meet with the captain. We spotted an unknown object not too far from our current position last night. They're discussing the matter right now." She explains.

"Ah. Gotcha."

They begin to make their way towards the closest airlock.

"So you and the lieutenant... If you don't mind me asking... well I mean... You guys seem pretty close." She says sheepishly.

"Yeah. We grew up together on Aries 4."

"Wow. That's one of the most advanced planets in the galaxy." She says.

"Yeah. When we were kids, we would always look up at the stars at night, and talk about one day being able to travel across the galaxy. Both of us joined the Galactic Enforcers and went through training together." He says.

"So are you two really good friends or...? Well... I mean... um.." Yuri says.

"Hm? What are you talking about?" He asks.

"Um. Never mind. Forget I said anything." She says frantically.

"Okay." He simply says dropping the matter.

They make their way to the airlock. They both fill their oxygen tanks and activate the helms on their space suits. They walk along the haul to the stern of the ship, and begin to fix the part of the thrusters. Like last time, he helps Yuri out. Mostly holding things for her, and following her instructions to a key.

"Those droids really did some extensive damage here." Yuri says.

"Yeah. Those things were pretty strong. I had no idea Zyria had such things at her disposal. What the hell were those things made of anyways?" He says, both equal parts mad and impressed.

"That's the thing." Yuri say suddenly. "I was conversing with the research department just a little while ago, and there were a lot of things they couldn't figure out about them either."

"What do you mean?" He asks.

"The metal of the droids wasn't anything we could identify. It seemed like normal Earth based alloys, but it had no atomic structure. Even stranger, there was little to no circuitry in them, and a complete lack of relay or surveillance devices on board. It's almost like they were working off of nothing." Yuri says.

"I see. That is strange. Well. Either way, Zyria will pay for what she's done. I'll make sure of that." He says with a slight amount of determination in his voice.

"Just remember: Galactic Enforcer HQ said they wanted her taken in alive." Yuri replies.

"Yeah I suppose you're right." He says, knowing that they have their orders from the higher ups.

The spend most of the day working on the outside of the ship. Yuri Eventually finishes work on the thrusters, and welds the metal cover back on.

"There. All done. Thank you very much for all your help." She says sweetly.

"No problem at all. Happy to help." He says.

They then make their way back inside the ship.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I could go for a nice hot cup of tea, and a bite to eat." Yuri says.

"Yeah. Me too." He replies.

"Glad you feel that way. They're serving cupcakes again in the mess hall. A nice cup of tea would go great with one of them."

"Uh... Yeah." He replies with a sort hesitant tone; suddenly remembering the dream from last night.

"Is something wrong? If you don't want a cupcake, that's fine. I'm sure the mess hall will have something else you can get to eat instead." She says.

"No it's not that. It's just..." He suddenly stops in his tracks. "Have you ever heard of the name Natsuki?" He says.

"Nat-su-ki? Hmm..." She too stops and thinks for a second. "The name does sound familiar, but at the same time, I don't know if I've every met anyone by that name. Er... Maybe I'm thinking of someone else. Why do you ask?" She inquires.

"It's just... um... Never mind." He says dismissing the subject. He feels like bringing up this dream would be to hard to explain. He's not even sure if he himself Understands it."

"So if you don't mind me asking, when will the you be getting your robotic arm?" He asks trying to change the subject.

"Actually, I should be getting it by then end of today." She says, as they enter the mess hall.

"Really? That's great!" He says.

"Yeah, but... I mean... If you still want to help me out, I would still like that. Your help is always appreciated."

"I mean. Sure, I guess."

They grab up their food and sit down. Suddenly, our hero gets a thought.

"You know. I still haven't seen Sayori around anywhere." He says looking around the room.

"Well, she's probably still with the captain." Yuri says.

"I guess." He says.

He knows Sayori is normally a girl with an appetite. Sure she has her duties aboard the ship, but she's not one to miss a meal. He and her always eat lunch together. Come to think of it, they haven't ate lunch together in some time. He starts to feel a little guilt about that.

"I'm gonna go see if I can find her." He says, mostly finished with his lunch anyways.

"A-are you sure?" Yuri says, secretly not wanting him to leave.

"Yeah, sorry. I hope that's okay."

"Sure... that's fine." She replies.

"Okay cool. I hope everything with getting your new arm works out for you. I'll catch you later." He says with a smile on his face.

"Uh. Yeah thank you."

Yuri is left by herself. With a slight feeling of disappointment and jealousy.


	11. At a Lost in Space

Sayori walks down the hall, just having met with the captain. Her depression has gotten worse over the last few days, yet she still manages to keep moving onward with her duties. As she walks down the hall, she eventually comes to couple of people talking around the corner. She stands near the wall and manages to eavesdrop on their conversation without them noticing, and listens in.

"I've noticed the Head Engineer, Yuri has been hanging around with that one guy. What's his name again?"

"I don't know, **but they seem to be getting real close to one another.**"

"Yeah. **They sure have been spending a lot of time together**."

"He was spending a lot of time with the lieutenant, but I don't see them together much anymore."

"**It's like he's not interested in her anymore**."

"It sort of seems that way."

"**I heard some say they saw Yuri and that one brown haired guy holding each other in the engine room**."

"Well, she did need help down in the engine room. After all, **she did lose an arm during that last attack**."

Hearing this puts Sayori in a spiral. She feels like her heart is breaking in two. She hurries off in the opposite direction, fighting back tears.

* * *

Later on. Our hero is making his way down the hall, looking for Sayori. As a crew member passes him by, he stops him as asks.

"Hey have you seen the lieutenant anywhere?"

"I think I saw her heading down to the barracks."

"Thanks."

He makes his way to the Barracks, and to Sayori's room. He opens the door. She's in her room setting on the edge of her bed facing away from the door.

"Sayori?" He say. She turns around.

"What are you doing here?" She says.

"I just wanted to see if you were doing okay." He comes in and sits next to her.

"I'm fine." She says faking a smile.

"Sayori." He says sternly, not buying that.

She then lets out a sigh.

"I'm sorry. It's just... I haven't seen you a lot lately." She say.

"Yeah. I've been helping Yuri out a lot."

"So I've heard."

He doesn't reply to that. He's a bit taken back by that comment. She then continues.

"Look. I've been doing a lot of think and... well... I don't know if I'm cut out to be in the Galactic Enforcers, or lieutenant of this ship."

"Sayori? What are you saying? This has always been our dream, remember? Ever since we were kids. Up here, traveling the stars, fighting for good; this is where we belong." He says. But for some reason, even though he went into that statement with confidence, he's not entirely convinced in what he himself just said. But he keeps quiet about that for Sayori's sake.

"Look. I just... need some time alone to think, okay?" She says.

"Are you sure?" For some reason, he really doesn't want to leave her alone right now.

"Just leave me be for now." She says.

"I just want to-"

"That's an order." She says cutting him off.

This catches him by surprise. However, he simply turns his head away in sadness and begins leaving the room without another word. But right before he walks out the door, Sayori speaks up once more.

"It's late. Try to get some rest, okay?" She says with a more sincere tone.

"Sure..." He says as he leaves the room and closes the door.

Outside the room, a crew member stands there holding a high frequency sword in its sheath. He speaks up.

"Oh hey there. I have the lieutenant's sword. It's been all tuned up for he like she asked. Would you mind handing it off to-"

"I don't think she in the mood for visitors right now." He says cutting him off.

"Oh... Um okay. I'll just leave it outside her door for now, then. I'm sure she'll find it."

"Sure whatever." He replies walking away.

He makes his way down the hall with a heavy heart, deep in thought. What's wrong with Sayori? What would make her act this way? He almost feels like he _should_ know, but can't quite figure it out. Eventually, he reaches his room. He goes in and lies down on his bed, with Sayori's sadness weighing on his mind. He thinks about her, about how she use to be. He wishes he could do something. He wishes with all his heart that he could make her feel better. It starts to occur to him how much she means to him, and in this sense, he wishes that she knew that as well.

But something else has also bothered him, albeit not as much. What Sayori said has sunk into his mind a bit. Is this really where he and her belong? He looks around his room at various posters. Most of them are from various games and anime set in a sci-fi genre. They remind him of why he wanted to be in the Galactic Enforcers in the first place. How both them and Sayori are the reason he's here now. He looks at the various posters. There's one of a man in power armor holding duel guns, one of a bounty hunter in space, and one of... of...

!

He sets up in bed and turns towards it quickly, but it appears just to be another one of his posters; a boy with a sword in space. But he could have sworn it was something else briefly, just like the schematics in the engine room. It appeared to be a girl in a room. In fact, it almost looked like Sayori. He shakes his head, and tries his best to brush it off. He lies back down with an uneasy feeling amidst his sadness. Eventually, he dozes off while still in his uniform.

* * *

Meanwhile: Queen Zyria sets in her chamber talking to her robot assistant.

"How goes the search?" She asks.

"My Queen, we have not been able to relocate the Iretuare's location. Its whereabouts at this point are still unknown." He replies.

"What about the others?"

"We still have yet to locate the others. It's a large galaxy after all."

Zyria then starts to get annoyed.

"A thousand apologies, my Queen."

"Have we made _any_ progress?" She asks.

"Well we did find out a little about that one individual you asked about." He says handing her a stack of papers.

"There wasn't much info, and the location of this individual still isn't known at this time."

"I see." She simply says

"Also we've managed to put a face to our target." He says. He then brings up an image on a big-screen monitor. She looks up at it, and gets a chill down her spine.

"I-I see." She say. She then closes her eyes and regains her composure.

"Our top priority is the elimination of this target, but still keep an eye out for the other people of interest." She orders.

"By your command."


	12. Left her Hanging

Our hero finds himself back in the strange Japanese Suburban realm, but this time, something feels different. Something feels off. It feels more ominous, broken. He's standing near some sort of crosswalk area. This place seems to have some sort of sense of familiarity to it. He notices the path to the school is blocked off. He tries to call out for Natsuki. "ÙɈȥĕģŷĸ!" But he can't.

Suddenly he hears voices, one male and the other female.

"_I over slept again, but I caught you this time."_

"_Maybe, but only because I decided to stop and wait for you."_

"Hello? Who's there? Sayori?" he says, confused. He knows that voice. It's definitely Sayori's, but who's the other person? He continues walking down the road and hears more lines from the voices echoing through the empty street.

"_Hey, Sayori..."_

"_...Sorry! I was spacing out!"_

"_I was thinking about something from earlier. Like how we got to... I mean..."_

He continues onward to a part of the suburb that he's never been to before... or has he? He walks by more houses. Feelings of heartbreak and anxiety wash over him.

"_You haven't come over like this in a long time, have you?"_

"_Ah... I guess you're right."_

Something about these words feel like knives against his very soul. He covers his ears as he quickens his pace down the street, in an attempt to block out the voices, but it's no use. He can still hear them in his head.

"_I had to come here and see for myself."_

"_What are you talking about?"_

"_You know... How much fun you were having with _ÅëħİţČ_, and how close you got to her."_

_..._

"_Do you remember how I said I always know what's best for you?"_

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" He yells. He doesn't know what's going on, he doesn't know what this is about, but it's tormenting him. Eventually, he reaches a house. I feels like... Sayori's house? But that can't be right. This looks like a normal Twenty-first century house, he and Sayori grew up on... on... He puts his hand on his forehead. It feels like two different sets of memories are battling for control in his mind. More so, this whole thing almost feels like it's trying to tell him something. Reluctantly, he comes to the house and knocks on the door "Hello?" There's no response. His heart begins to race. He opens the door and lets himself in. It's dark with no lights on, but it still looks like a normal house.

"_Sayori? Wake up, dummy."_

That voice. It almost sounds like... Himself? But he doesn't remember saying these things. He makes his way up stairs to a door. A powerful sense of fear runs through his body. He reaches out to the door, almost out of instinct; his hand trembling. He opens the door and sees a sight that makes him drop to his knees. It's the image that he thought he saw in the posters out of the corner of his eye, as if they were warning him of this. He see Sayori hanging dead from a noose, her lifeless body rocking back and forth ever so gently.

"No... no... This can't be... Why? Sayori! SAYORI!" He yells in agony.

* * *

Suddenly he walks up in bed, back in his room aboard the Iretuare. He flails about and falls off his bed, tangled in his sheets, covered in cold sweat, and breathing heavily. He looks around with his heart still racing. It was all just a dream? Or was it? Sayori looked pretty sad when he left her alone last night. Could she have...? "No..." he says to himself quietly. He frantically gets up and races down the hallway! The thought of losing her throwing him into a panic!

As he runs down the hall of the barracks. He starts to frantically talk to himself. "Oh god-Oh god. No. Sayori." He reaches her room and knocks on the door. "Sayori? Sayori!?" There's no response. He tries to open the door, but it's locked. Suddenly his head is filled with the image of her hanging there! Maybe she's still alive. Maybe he can still save her. He desperately bangs on the door before noticing something! It's her sword. The one the crew member left outside for her last night. Without hesitation, he picks it up and begins hacking away at her door! The high frequency blade carving up the door and the surrounding wall. He slices up the locking bolts to where he can slide the door by hand. He slowly opens the door "Say-"

….

….

….

It's empty. She's not here. He stands there still breathing heavily; heart pounding. He feels slightly revealed, but at the same time: Where is she? He drops the sword and makes his way down the hall before coming to a crew member. "Have you seen Sayori?" He asks. "The lieutenant? Yeah she was at the observational deck." "Thanks." he says running off.

He makes his way to the observational deck. It's an open room, surrounded be see-through acrylic giving you a good view outside of the ship. He sees Sayori at the far end of the room, leaning on a counter looking out at space. He slowly walks up to her. "S-Sayori..?" He says, causing her to turn around. "Hmm? There you are. I was wondering wh-" Suddenly he lunges at her and and hugs her. She blushes a bit, then gently pushes him off.

"What's gotten into you?" She asks.

"T-the other night. You- I had this dream that you- I mean... you were so sad the yesterday- I-I... thought you were... That you were gonna do something terrible. That I had lost you." He says fumbling his words, overwhelmed with emotion. Suddenly Sayori diverts her gaze downward. As if for some reason, she knows exactly what he's talking about.

"No, silly. Of course not." She says. She puts her hand against her chest."This pain in my heart, it hurts, but... the thought of never seeing you again, the thought of leaving you behind, hurts even more." She explains. "I just... thought you had forgotten about me. You were spending so much time with Yuri." She says sadly.

"Sayori... I'm... I'm so sorry. I didn't know how much this was hurting you. You're the most important person in my life. I now realize this." He say pouring his guts out.

"Really?" Her face lights up at that remark.

"Well yeah, of course. I mean you followed me all the way up into space after all." He says with a smile on his face.

"I suppose you're right, but what about Yuri?" She asks.

He looks downward. "Look... The reason I started spending so much time with her was because... because I was the one that broke the hyper-space drive that day." he confesses. Sayori looks at his with a surprised expression before he continues.

"It was an accident, I swear. But... I felt so guilty about what happened to her; I felt like it was all my fault she lost her arm." Finally admitting this, he feels a great sense of relief.

Sayori then speaks up. "It's okay. You shouldn't bare this burden." She say. She then continues. "But I guess neither should I. All this time... I was blaming myself over what happened to her. I felt like I failed her not only as a commanding officer, but as a friend, and..." She trails off.

He then picks up.

"Perhaps we need to let bygones be bygones. I'm sure Yuri would understand."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right. Come on, let's get going." She beacons. With that they leave the observational deck, and begin walking down the hall.

"So are you sure you're going to be okay?" He asks.

"I still feel a bit down, but I'm much better now." She say with a smile.

"I'm glad to hear."

"Yeah. I guess we should just-" She suddenly cuts off her sentence as they approach her room. She looks on at the sight of her door broken, forced open, and slashed to hell.

"Umm... What the heck happened here?" She says with a look of confusion.

"Er... Well... You see... I tried knocking, but when you didn't respond, I got worried and..."

"So you sliced my door up?" She says plainly.

He looks away embarrassed and rubs the back of his head.

"Well... When you put it like that... Yeah, sorry. I suppose this means I'm in a lot of trouble." He say.

Sayori simply smiles and shakes her head. "It's okay. I'll just write this up as a 'weapons malfunction'. Besides, I'm sure we can get someone to fix this up in no time."

"Thanks." He says sincerely.

"But honesty, you really need to shape up a bit. I already had to cover for you missing the briefing with the captain this morning." She says.

"Briefing?" He asks.

Sayori lets out a slight sigh. "I'll fill you in: We found a destroyed ship about 5.2 Astronomical Units from our current possession. Upon further investigation, we found out it was one of Queen Zyria's ships, the Overseer. Turns out that it had engaged one of our other Galactic Enforcer ships, and had sustained severe damage in the battle. It seem it tried to retreat from combat, but it didn't survive the jump thought hyper-space. The ship currently sits in ruins, without any power."

"So what does this have to do with us?" He asks.

"We believe its on board navigational computer might hold the location of Queen Zyria herself. Our mission is to board the ship and extract the data contained in its computer mainframe."

"How are we going to do that?"

"You and me will be assisting Yuri with operation. Computer Science isn't her main field of expertise, but she's the best we have."

"Right. Understood." He says.

"Arm yourself and meet us at the docking bay in 10 minutes, and this time, maybe save some of those attacks for the enemies." She says, picking up her sword up from beside the slashed up door.

"Umm... Right. You got it." He says still a embarrassed. With that they part ways.

* * *

Meanwhile, the mysterious figure sits behind the wall of monitors. They look at an image of our hero and Sayori consoling each other in the observational deck. "How?" they say "How's this possible? I thought for sure I..." They stop themselves mid sentence. "Well. It guess it doesn't really matter at this point." They then turn and look at another monitor with a destroyed ship on it floating space. "I'll have what I want soon enough." They say.


	13. Deleted Fiends

10 minutes later, our hero meets Sayori at the docking bay. He and her are both armed with laser rifles and high-frequency blades. They stand outside one of the pods.

"Well I'm about ready." He says.

"Good. All we got to do is wait for Yuri." She replies.

"Are you sure she's in good enough condition for this?" He asks, knowing she probably just got her robotic arm not too long ago.

"Hopefully. She insisted on coming along, either way." She says.

They then hear someone behind them.

"First class engineer Yuri reporting for duty, sir." Yuri says entering the room with a salute and smile. She now has two arms, although you can't tell that one is robotic since she's wearing her combat armor that covers everything from the neck down.

"Yuri. I'm glad you could make it." Our hero says.

"Same here. You're looking a lot better." Sayori says.

"Thanks."

Sayori then opens a hologram image of the ship, and goes over the plan."Alright everyone, here's the plan: We'll take transport pod 12 to the enemy ship located at about 78.5 kilometers from our current position. We'll enter via a docking port at the starboard quarter. From there we'll head towards the bow. Hopefully the navigational hardware will be somewhere in that area. No one's ever been aboard these sort of ships, so there's no telling what awaits us there. Everyone clear?"

"Yes sir." Both Yuri and our hero say at the same time.

"Alright then. Move out!"

With that they enter the transport pod; a small cylindrical shuttle. Sayori enters a few commands into the console, and they soon take off. Moments later, they near the wreckage of the ship. It's a large ship, with a massive amount of damage. Debris from the ship floats all around in the vacuum of space. They find the ship's docking bay, and land their pod. Yuri looks at a readout on the pod's computer, and speaks up.

"Looks like the inside of the ship is pressurized with breathable atmospheric gases."

"I wonder why?" Sayori asks.

"Probably because some of the ship's inner workings require it." Yuri explains.

"Either way, I'm not gonna look a gift-horse in the mouth." Our hero says.

With that, they leave the pod and begins exploring the ship. The inside of ship is made of a black metal substance. It's fairly dark with some battery powered backup lights and their personal suit lights lighting the way. They come to a door that looks like it opens automatically, but they instead have to open it by hand.

"Looks like the power's out." Yuri says, sliding the door open.

"Might be for the best. This way the ship's emergency beacon can't signal its location." Sayori follows up.

"Something tells me the robots are still alive and well though." Our hero says.

"Exactly. We'll need to stay on our toes. These ships are mostly automated, but there could be some attack droids that were no deployed, still aboard." Yuri explains.

They make their way down a corridor, before reaching a large open room with metal pod looking devices. It looks like on of the pods have broken open. Yuri then gets a look at a map of the place. It's not too hard to make out.

"Looks like the ship's mainframe is just around the corner. Yuri says.

"Wait. I hear something." Sayori says. Suddenly, several giant praying mantis and spider robots come out of one of the pods.

"Looks like we got company!" our hero says.

They pick off a few of the robots with their laser rifles, before they mange to close the gap. Yuri pulls out her daggers and engages one of the praying mantis bots. It slashes down at her, but she parries it, and she gets it across the body with a slash. It then tries to bite down on her, but Yuri blocks it with her daggers, and manages to leap upon its back. She then takes its head off by slitting its throat with both her daggers at the same time, then does a back-flip off of it, letting its body fall to the ground.

Our hero rushes some sort of humanoid robot with a spider lower half. It swings at him with a sword. He then blocks it and kicks it back. He then slices its sword arm off, and stabs it through with his blade, then runs the blade upward through its body, cutting it in half. Another humanoid spider approaches Sayori with a spear. It stabs at her but she manages to block it. She then takes a swing at it with her sword, but it blocks it. It then tries once more to bring the spear down on her, but she sidesteps it, and takes it out at the legs. While it's down, she stabs her sword through the head, finishing it off.

"Everyone okay?" Sayori asks.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Those guys were no challenge at all." Our hero says.

"I would figure with a ship like this, there would be more formidable foes aboard." Yuri says, but then something makes a loud banging noise. Then a gigantic spider monster with bladed forearms and a tail with an ax head on it, comes bursting out of one of the pods.

"Something like that?" Our hero asks.

The giant monster leaps towards them, and they all jump away in various direction. Yuri runs at it from the side. It swings its ax tail at her but she leaps over it and lands next to it and gashes its leg with her dagger. It then turns around quickly and knocks her away with one of its bladed arms, causing her to tumble across the floor with a cut across her stomach. Our hero then runs up to it with his sword and slices down on it, only to have it turn around and block his blow with its arm blades. It swings down at him with its blades, causing him to volt back. It then starts slashing at him. He goes on the defense blocking its attacks, but gets hit in the arm.

"Yuri! You said the mainframe is just around the corner right? Go on ahead and extract the data from the computer. We'll keep this thing busy." Sayroi orders.

"Right. Got it." Yuri says, standing back up and running out of the room. Leaving our hero and Sayori to fight the creature.

Sayori then fires a few shots from her rifle into the giant spider. It turns towards her. Our hero then attempts to charge it down while its distracted, but it quickly swats him away with its tail. It then charges down Sayroi. It slices down at her, only for her to leap back and slice its head with her sword. But then it grabs her with its pincers and bites down on her, causing her to yell out in pain.

"SAYORI!" Our hero yells. He then fires off a few shots from his rifle, causing it to release her. She manages to get away from it, and runs back over to our hero.

"Are you okay?" He asks.

"Yeah, it's not too bad." She says covering her abdomen.

"I think we're out of our league here. We've barely put a dent in this thing." Our hero say bluntly, as the creator turns back around at them. It then leaps through the air at them.

"Scatter!" Sayori yells out.

They then run off in opposite directions, as the giant droid lands with a big crash, cause the floor to give way, as it collapses into the room below. Sayori thinking quickly, stabs her sword into a nearby wall, stopping her from falling. However, our hero and the giant spider droid fall into the room below, then through that floor into the room below that. Sayori watches helplessly, as our hero disappears from sight with that creator.

Our hero and the droid land in the bottom floor in what looks like the engine room of the ship. He sustained multiple injuries from the fall, but the droid is none the worse for wear. He staggers to his feet and swings at it multiple times. It blocks the first few hits, but he manages to slice it with the last one, it then swats him away, causing him to crash into a nearby wall.

Before he can get back up, it spits some sort of gooey substance at him, gluing his arms and sword to the floor. He attempts to break free, but he can't. He watches helplessly as the giant creature comes to finish the job. 'Is this really it?' he thinks to himself. Is he really going to die here? What about Sayori? She was counting on him. Counting on him to be there for her, so she would have the strength to go on. What will she do without him? He feels like he as failed her. He squints his eyes shut and turns away as he waits for what feel like his inevitable demise.

* * *

The shadowy figure watches our hero on a monitor. "What happens if he dies here? I may never know the truth about him if that happens." They say to themselves. "I have to do something. But what?" They stop and think for a minute. They then look at their hands. "This hasn't worked so far, but maybe against _her_ creations...?" They then look back at the screen, and see the spider closing in on our hero. "Ooooh. It's worth a shot! Here it goes!"

os. remove ("zyria/giant ")

giant spider deleted successfully.

* * *

Our hero sits there with his eyes closed for a good minute, before noticing things got strangely quiet. He opens his eyes and looks around. The giant spider robot is... gone. "What... the hell?" he says out loud, with a feeling of both confusion and relief. Suddenly Sayori comes running in through a door into the room, and approaches our hero.

"There you are! Are you alright!? Where's the attack droid!?" Sayori says frantically, looking around.

"I don't know. It just disappeared. Don't suppose you could help me out here? I'm sort of stuck." He replies.

"Oh yes. Of course." She says. She manages to cut him out of the glue-like substance, and helps him to his feet.

"Thanks." He says.

"Don't mention it. So you don't know where the droid went?" Sayori asks.

"No. It just... vanished." He tries to explain.

"Well, I guess so long as it's gone and you're safe, that's all that matters."

"Yeah I suppose you're right." He says.

Sayori nods in agreement, then contacts Yuri over the her communications device.

"Yuri, did you get the data from the ship's navigational computer?" She asks.

"Yes. I've already uploaded it to our ship's data-storage." Yuri says.

Sayori then radios the captain. "Captain, did you get that?"

"Affirmative. The data has been secured. Good work, team. Return to base at once." The captain says.

"Yes, sir." Sayori says. With that, they make their way back to the transport pod, and fly back to the Iretuare.

* * *

Meanwhile, the shadowy figure sits in their room of monitors, contemplating all that has happened. "I now know that I can at least delete her creations. This will be a big help, to say the least." They then look back at the monitors. "As for you: I think it's about time we meet face to face."


	14. Captain's Curtain Call

Yuri, Sayori, and our hero find themselves back at the ship, in the medical bay getting patched up. The injuries they sustained during the mission were fairly bad, our hero in particular was in way worse condition than the other two, but with the ship's advanced technology, they're back up on their feet in no time, although they are still a bit sore.

"Damn, I feel a million times better. This medical bay never ceases to amaze me. Thanks, doc." Our hero say with an upbeat tone while flexing his shoulder.

"No problem, but will advise you to not take it for granted. There's only so much we can do." The doctor states as a grim reminder.

"Yeah... I suppose you're right." He says, rubbing the back of his head.

"Anyways, you're free to go." The doctor says.

He then leave the medical bay, and is met Sayori along the hallway.

"There you are. You doing any better?" She asks.

"Yeah, much better. How bout you and Yuri?" He asks her in return. They then begin to walk down the hall together.

"Yeah me and her are just fine. Good job on the mission, by the way."

"Thanks." He says.

"With the data we extracted from that wrecked ship, we were able to decipher the location of Queen Zyria's headquarters. The captain has already handed the info to the Galactic Enforcer's HQ." Sayori explains.

"I see. So we're finally gonna take the fight to her?" He asks with a slight bit of enthusiasm in his voice.

"That's right. They may call upon us for help though. But still, you should save your energy for your bathroom cleaning duties." She says out of the blue.

"Yeah after all it's gonna b- Wait. What?" He asks confused.

"Yeah. You'll be cleaning the bathrooms for the next week or so." She says with a cheeky grin.

"What!? But why?" He asks.

"For breaking the Hyper-space drive of course. What, you didn't think I'd let you completely off the hook for that one, did you?" She says, with an odd smile on her face.

He lets out a sign. "Fine. Whatever." He says, sulking a bit.

"Say: Do you wanna get a bite to eat? I'm starving." He says.

"Sure. I have to attend to a few things first, but it shouldn't take long. I'll meet you in the mess hall in about 10 minutes."

"Okay, see you then." He says.

He makes his way to down the hall, and eventually runs into Yuri.

"Oh hey, Yuri." He says.

"Hello. Good to see you again. How's it going?" She says with her normal upbeat tone, and warm smile.

"It's going alright. I was just on my way to the mess hall." He says.

"I see. I was just on my way to the engine room to preform a scheduled tuneup on the fuel injector, but... um... I can put that on hold if you want to- you know, to join me for lunch." She says twiddling her hair nervously like she normally does.

"Well actually, I was just about to meet Sayori for lunch here in a few minutes." He says, with a nervous tone. "But you're welcome to join us if you want." He adds on.

Yuri then diverts her eyes for a second.

"N-no that's fine, I-I'm good. I should probably got get to work on the fuel injector first anyways." She says, bringing back her smile.

"Okay, if you're sure." He says, picking up on a weird vibe from her, but trying not to let it show.

"I'm good, thank you. Y-you know, an engineer's work is never done." She says.

"Alright. I'll catch you later, then." He says walking off.

"Yeah, see you later." She says looking back at him smiling and waving.

Once he's out of sight, her expression then breaks into on of disappointment, as she begins to make her way towards the engine room.

* * *

Later our hero is met with Sayori at the mess hall for lunch. They sit with each other eating their meals, talking to each other about various things, suddenly our hero changes the conversation.

"Hey, Sayori." He says, with a somber tone.

"Um. Yes?"

"Has Yuri been acting... sort of- I don't know, strange lately?" He asks, with a bit of concern in his voice. Sayori is a little caught off guard by this question.

"What do you mean?" She asks.

"Well she just seems a little... I don't know... She just seem like she has something on her mind or something." He says, trying to put it into words.

"Well, I mean- she's been through a lot these last few days; we all have." Sayori says, trying to come up with an answer.

"I suppose." He says. "It's just that she's normally not like this. She's always been quiet, polite, and attentive... things like that. But lately, she seems to be acting a bit moody, I guess." He goes on to explain.

"She seemed okay on the mission." Sayori states.

"I guess..."

"But yeah, I feel like this sour attitude would be more befitting for another crew member." Sayori says out of the blue.

"Another crew member? Like who?" He ask; that sentence piquing his interest.

"Well... I don't know. It just feels like there should be someone here with a sort of sour, mean spirited, attitude, or something." She tries to explain, as if something is missing.

Our hero then stops and thinks for a second.

"Hey Sayroi, have you ever heard of the name 'Natsuki' before?" He asks, not knowing what her response will be.

"Natsuki? I don't-" Before she can finish that thought, a crew member comes over to the table, and addresses our hero.

"Excuse me. I hope I'm not interrupting anything, but the captain wishes to see you." They say to our hero.

"The captain wants to see _me_? Why?" He asks.

"I don't know. I was only told that you were to report to the captain's chamber as soon as you can." They simply state.

"Okay. I'm pretty much done with lunch anyways. Sayori, I'll catch you later." He says.

"Sure thing." She says.

He then gets up and walks out of the mess hall.

As he walks through the ship, he thinks to himself: He's never met the captain before, he doesn't know what kinda person they could be. They've heard them over communications before, but admittedly, they don't exactly have the best audio equipment in the galaxy, so he can't really decipher anything from what's he's heard. Eventually, he makes it to the door outside the captain's room. He knocks on the door. "Come on in." He hears from the other side of the door. He then enters the room. It's a small office room with a desk. On the far side of the room, there's a wall of monitors on a console of some sort, but none of them seem to be on at the moment. The captain sets facing away from our hero in a chair.

"Glad you could make it." A female voice says. The voice sounds familiar to him. The captain then turns around in her chair to reveal herself.

….

….

….

"Monika?" He says.

"It's been awhile, right?" She replies.

"Yeah, it has." He says. Monika Smiles sweetly. They do know each other- Well they rarely talked, but they were in the same weapons training course. Monika was probably the most popular girl in training. Smart, beautiful, athletic. Basically completely out of his league, so having her smile at him so genuinely feels a little...

"So you're our captain? Er- um... Sir." He says with a hasty salute.

She then giggles a bit at his rushed formality. "At ease." She says simply.

" R-right. So what did you call me in here for?" He asks.

"Oh I just wanted to congratulate you personally for all of your efforts and accomplishments in the name of interstellar peace. " She says.

"Oh-um. Thank you. But really, it was was nothing." He says humbly, knowing that he's not exactly the best Galactic Enforcer in the universe.

"Nonsense." She says. "With your help, we will finally be able to bring Queen Zyria to justice. More to the point though, I was hoping to ask you a few questions. Maybe you would like to... um, share some of your secrets for success with me."

"I mean- It's nothing really. I don't think I really have any 'secrets'. In fact, Yuri and Sayori did most of the work." He states.

"Ah yes. You and them make quite a good team. Tell me, do you know them from somewhere?" Monika asks.

"Well, me and Sayori grew up together. As for Yuri, we only met a few days ago." He says.

"Hmm... I see." She says simply. "Where are you from anyways? I mean- Where were you before you were on this ship?"

"Well before you and me met, I lived on Aries IV, where I grew up with Sayori." He says.

Monika's smile fades a bit.

"Ah- Well you've certainly outdone yourself in combat. You must have some sort of secret." She inquires.

"What do you mean?" He asks

"Well perhaps you have someone at your side, helping you along, supporting you? Maybe like a secret guardian?" She asks.

"I mean... I guess there's Sayori. She's saved me so many times in the pass." He says bluntly.

"Nobody else?" She says, sounding disappointed at that answer.

"Like who?" He asks, not quite knowing where she's going with this.

Monika's smile fades, and her tone all of a sudden changes.

"Who am I talking to? Can you hear me?" She says with a strange sense of desperation in her voice.

"Um... Are you okay?" He asks, now totally confused.

Monika pauses for a second, then regains her composure, and smiles once more. "Y-yeah, I'm fine. I was just trying a little... captain's trick is all. Helps keep your crew members on their toes." She explains

"Oooooookay..." He says, not completely convinced that was what was really going on.

"Anyways. You are dismissed for now." She says.

"Y-yes, sir." He says leaving the room.

Once he's gone, Monika lets out a sigh of disappointment. "I guess you're not really them after all." She says with a sad tone. "Oh well. I guess there's nothing else I can do now but move forward."

As he leaves the room he thinks over everything about his situation on this ship. He can't believe Monika is his captain. But thinks some more. Yuri, Sayori, and now Monika. Once he thinks about it he now comes to a conclusion about his fellow crew member: this ship...

….

….

….

IS FULL OF INCREADIBLY CUTE GIRLS! This fact should excite him, yet for some reason, now that he's met the captain, he suddenly feels a deep seeded feeling of dread. As if there's something deep down warning him of something; something bad. He does his best to shake off the feeling and continues onwards with the rest of his day.

* * *

Meanwhile, Yuri is in the engine room by herself fixing up the fuel injections system; the thought of Sayori taking our hero away from her festering in the back her mind. She comes across a bolt that she needs to undo. She grabs the appropriate sized wrench, but she can't get a good grip on the bolt. It seems to be stripped out, she tries desperately to get it undone, but can't get it. Eventually she gets frustrated; the thought of Sayori with our hero fueling the the fires of her rage. "GAAAAAH" She lets out an uncharacteristic cry of rage and throws the wrench across the room into a wall, causing it to let out a loud noise.

"Um... is everything okay over here?" A crew member comes in to see what all the commotion was about. "Uh-er.. yeah I'm fine. I-I just accidentally dropped my wrench, that's all; nothing to worry about." Yuri frantically says, regaining her composure. "Okay. I was just checking." They say leaving. Yuri then lets out a sigh through her nose.


	15. Briefings and Grieving

The next day, our hero finds himself cleaning the bathrooms of the ship, much to his displeasure. During this tedious and unpleasant task, he has time to himself to think. He can't shake this feeling about Captain Monika. She's a sweet girl, and a strong leader that has lead them well, albeit a bit absent at times. All things considered, he should have the utmost respect for her, but the very thought of her puts a pit in his stomach. Also he's noticed that he hasn't seen Natsuki in his dreams over the past few days.

He gets done with the bathrooms on the lower level, and starts to head towards the ones on the upper levels. As he heads that way with a small janitorial cart, he meets Sayori. She smirks a bit at the sight of him wheeling around a cleaning cart. They begin to walk together.

"You look a bit too happy about this." He says, slightly irritated.

"Sorry, I'm just not use to the sight of you as a custodian." She says. "So how's the cleaning going so far?"

"Let's just say this crew needs to work on their aim a bit, and I ain't talking about their long range weaponry." He replies. She giggles a bit at that. It makes him feel humiliated, but at the same time, he's kinda glad to see her laugh and smile again after how she acted a few days ago.

"By the way, how did the meeting with the captain go?" She asks.

"Oh- Um... Great. It went great. She just wanted to congratulate me and stuff." He says. He chooses not to bring up the unease feeling he gets from Monika, nor does he make mention of the awkward "captain's test" she did.

"Oh that's good. I heard that you and her had met before." She says.

"Yeah, we were in the same weapons training class together. I don't think you were there."

"I guess not." She dismisses.

Sayori then changes the subject. "Also I looked into that name you mentioned, 'Natsuki'."

"And...?"

"Well I wasn't able to find anything; at least not in our records. The name does sound familiar, but personally I just don't recall anyone with that exact name." She replies.

"I see..." He says, slightly disappointed. The story's more or less the same as it was with Yuri. At this point, he's starting to think that maybe it was all just some extremely vivid dream.

As they approach the next bathroom, suddenly the captain comes on over the PA system. "Attention everyone. All available personnel please report to the conference room for a briefing in the next 15 minutes, that is all." She says.

"Well, looks like won't have to clean any more toilets." He says happily.

"For now." Sayori replies.

"Yeah..."

"Come on. We should get going." With that they head to the conference room.

* * *

15 minutes later, everyone has gathered at the conference room. Everyone is there and, the room is filled with mild chatter. Eventually, Captain Monika enters the room and makes her way to the stage at the front. "Okay everyone." She says getting everyone's attention. The chatter ceases as Monika continues.

"As you are all aware by now, we have successfully acquired information leading us to the location of Queen Zyria's base. I have handed this crucial data over to the Galactic Enforcers HQ, and they in turn have given us new orders regarding the situation. We are to arrive at the outskirts of her base located in the Taurus Nebula. We will make the hyper-space jump immediately following this briefing. It should take us less than 24 hours to arrive from our current location. Upon exiting hyper-space, we will arrive approximately 1.5 Astronomical Units from her base. This should be far enough away that the bases proximity sensors won't detect us." She says, showcasing this on a large projection screen.

She then continues. "From there, we will rendezvous with a Galactic Enforcer assault force. We are to assist them in their efforts to storm Queen Zyria's base. Since we have had so much experience in battling Zyria's attack droids at this point, our knowledge and skills will prove to be an invaluable asset to the mission. Is that understood?" She finishes. "Yes sir." Everyone says while saluting. "Alright. Make whatever preparations you feel will be necessary for the mission. Meeting adjourned." She says dismissing everyone.

* * *

The next day, Queen Zyria converses with her robot assistant as usual. Her eyes are baggy, and she looks absolutely exhausted. A few days ago, she learned that a Galactic Enforcer ship similar in appearance to the Iretuare, had boarded one of her own ships, and taken the homing data straight from its navigational computer. Which means the one she was hunting down in hopes of eliminating, is now most likely on their way to her. This thought has kept her up for days now.

"My queen, you look terrible. You really need to get some rest." The robot assistant says.

"I'm fine. It's nothing. You don't need to worry about it, okay?" She insists.

"Look, your base has been outfitted with your most powerful creations. Neither Monika nor the Galactic Enforcers should be a any problem. Rest assured." He says. However this doesn't ease her mind in the least bit.

"Well either way, did you manage to find the others yet?" She asks. They haven't been able to make much headway on this so far, so she's not expecting much at this point, but she still desperately wants to locate them.

"Well actually... We have." The robot assistant says, with a hesitant tone, as if he has some bad news to bare. Her eyes light up at this remark.

"You have? Where!? Where are they!?" She asks enthusiastically.

"Well... Um... You see..." He stammers.

"Come on, out with it. What's wrong?" She asks.

"Maybe... you should read the report yourself." He replies with a somber tone.

He then hands her a piece of paper in an envelop. She opens it up and begins poring over it. Suddenly her face looses all color as her eyes go wide. Her heart drops into her stomach at what she just read. "Y-Yuri and Sayori were aboard the Iretuare... d-during our attack...?" Shocked, she loses grip on the parer as it flutters to the ground.

"..." Her robot assistant remains silent. Suddenly she runs over to him, puts her hands on his casing, and looks in straight in his optical receptacle.

"ARE THEY OKAY!? WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM!? PLEASE TELL ME!" She pleads.

"A thousand apologies, my queen. I-I have no idea." He replies frantically. She then steps back and turns away from him, hunched over in silence.

"My queen... I'm truly-"

"Just.. leave me alone now please..." She interrupts. Without another word, her robot assistant leaves the room. She then runs into her bedroom, and closes the door. She presses her back against the wall and slides down it onto the floor. She sits there in a fetal position with her hands on her head, fighting back tears.

"What have I done!? What have I done!? What have I done!?" She says over and over again.

"Yuri. Sayori. Please be okay. Please!" Up until now, she had gotten a bit drunk with this power of hers, and was driven a little mad with her obsession with stopping Monika at all costs. But this revelation has sobered her up. She created these robots that acted on nothing but killer instinct alone, in hopes that they would finish Monika swiftly. But now she sees the consequences actions.

She sits there wallowing in despair. Not only is Monika most likely on her way, but now she has possibly hurt, or even killed the ones she cared about. She doesn't know what to do now. All this power at her disposal; the ability to create most anything, and she feels completely helpless.


	16. My Confession

The Iretuare leaves hyper-space, and arrives at its designated location; an area outside the Taurus Nebula close to Zyria's base, but not so close that her scanners can pick up on them. Once they arrive, Captain Monika once again gathers everyone in the conference room, for a final briefing. "Okay everyone. We have officially arrived our set location. The assault squad will meet us here around 17:00, approximately 8 hours from now. Make sure to rest up, and make any necessary preparations beforehand. I myself will be making my own personal preparations, as well as going over battle plans with our assault squad via remote communications. During this time, I ask not to be disturbed. The lieutenant will be in charge of everything in my absence."

"Right. Leave it to me, sir." Sayori says with a salute.

"Alright everyone. You are dismissed." Monika says finally.

With that everyone leaves the room.

* * *

Queen Zyria continues to sit there in her room, lost in thought, lost in despair, with no idea on what to do next, or where to turn. It's too late to run at this point, and even if she does, she has nowhere to run anyways. Monika will eventually find her now with that navigational computer data she snagged. She's contemplates her next move, but comes up empty handed. Suddenly she senses something with her powers. Something familiar. Her head perks up a bit. "What's this?" she says to herself. "Is that...? It is... It's the boy from my dreams." She says to herself.

Until now, she wasn't even sure he really even existed in this world; that maybe he was just a part of some crazy dream she was having, but now that she can feel his presence, she knows for sure he's not only real, but not too far away either. She thinks for a second. Maybe there's a way to contact him. Maybe he can help her somehow. She's not sure how or if he can help her, but she's got no other idea at this point. She thinks some more. Maybe... just maybe, she can use her powers to communicate with him similarly to how she contacted him accidentally in her dreams. She's never done anything like this before, but she has to try. She begins to concentrate.

* * *

Our hero makes his way back to his room in the barracks. His mind swarming with thoughts about the assault on Zyria's fortress. This could be his most dangerous and important mission yet as a Galactic Enforcer. Eventually, he gets to his room and opens the door. However, once he steps inside, he sees a most unexpected sight. "What the fuck!?" he cries out. The inside of his room, isn't his room. It's... the classroom from his dreams, but it's all dark and glitchy, with a weird energy surrounding the air, and there in the middle of the room, is the small pink haired girl he has seen in his dreams many a times before. However she's wearing some sort of fancy white outfit, that makes her look like royalty or something.

"Natsuki?" He asks confused "What the hell in going on here? Am I asleep? What are you wearing? Why are we here? Where did my room go?" He continues.

"Look. This is gonna be really hard for me to explain, but I need your help." She replies.

"How so?" He asks, intrigued, but still confused.

"Okay. I don't know how else to explain this, but right now the entire universe is in danger. There's this girl out there who wants to destroy our existence. She was the one mentioned in the manga. He name is Monika."

"Monika? My captain? Wait... Manga?" He asks, the manga in his dreams coming back to him.

"So... You were on her ship too?" She inquires, diverting her eyes with a great feeling of guilt.

"Are you saying... my captain- Monika, wants to destroy the entire universe? You're making some pretty outrageous clams here. Why should I believe you? What reason would Monika possibly have for destroying the universe?" He asks.

"Come on, you have to believe me." She says.

"She's been probably been poisoning you and your crew mates minds with what little bit of her powers she has." Nasuki continues.

"What are you talking about? How does Monkia have 'powers'?" He asks.

"Come on, haven't you noticed anyone acting strange on your ship?" She enquirers. That statement somewhat makes sense to him given Yuri and Sayori's strange behaviors, but he's still far from convinced.

"Look, even if I do believe you, how exactly will does Monika plan on going about doing this?" He asks.

"She's going to try to kill me in order to get her powers from me. I know it. She's on your ship and you're close by, so it won't be long until she gets here. This is really embarrassing, but please, you have to do something." She pleads.

"Kill you and take your powers? How does that even work? What sort of powers- " He ponders this for a second, until it hits him.

"You... YOU'RE Queen Zyria?" He asks stunned. His shock then turns to anger.

"Do you have ANY idea what sort of trouble you've caused!?" He barks out. Natsuki merely diverts her gaze.

"Your goddamn droids almost got me and my crew mates killed! Twice! My friend Yuri lost her arm because of you!" He yells out finally. Natsuki gasps at the statement, the weight of what he said hitting her like a ton of bricks. Finally the gravity of the situation becomes too much for her to shoulder any longer. Her eyes start to tear up, as she drops to her knees, puts her face in her hands and begins to breakdown and cry. She cries for a good minute, tears falling to the floor of this surreal room. "I'm sorry! I'm so, so, so, sorry! I didn't mean for any of this to happen this way! I just- I-I-" She then continues to pour her heart out.

Our hero, once rife with anger, cools down a bit and starts to feel bad for her at this point. He's starting to get the feeling that she didn't mean any harm, and that maybe he should at least hear her out.

"Natsuki, explain to me what's going on. Why did you do all these things?" He says, sympathetic, but still a bit mad.

"One day, I woke up and found myself in this world, with these strange powers." She says calming down a bit. "The power to alter the entire world around me. But also... my head was filled with these memories of what seemed like another lifetime. Memories of a school, memories of a club with others that I considered to be my friends, and memories... memories of some evil, awful person; doing horrible things to me and those I cared about." Nasuki explains, still sobbing with tears running down her face.

"Making us hang ourselves, stab ourselves, driving us insane, and removing us from existence all together." She says. That statement shakes our hero to his very core. Suddenly he remembers that dream where Sayori hung herself, and vivid image he had of Yuri bleeding out on the floor. But could Monika really be tied to this?

"Once I was in this world, I knew my friends would be here somewhere, as well as that horrible, horrible person. I built this empire, hoping to find this person, stopping them and find my friends, but I... I just got carried away with this power, okay?" She admits.

Our hero then comes over to her, and helps her off the floor. He then looks straight into her eyes and speaks up "Natsuki, I will do what I can to help. I will look into this. However, once this is all said and done, you will have to answer for what you've done. Okay?" He says this in an attempt to console her, however, he's not even sure where to begin with that, or even if what she says is true. Even if that uneasy feeling that he gets from Monika lends credibility to it.

"..." Nasuki remains silent, her crying coming to an end. Suddenly she hears the voice of her robot assistant calling her back at her base.

"I have to go. Please, just stop Monika and... and please, tell Sayori and Yuri I'm sorry." Natsuki says finally.

"Wait. What?" Our hero says, but before he can continue, she disappears and he finds himself back in his room all by himself.

"What did she mean by that?" He asks himself. "Does she know Sayori and Yuri somehow?"


	17. The Reality of It

Our hero stands there for a second in the middle of his room, contemplating what just happened. Is Monika really planning on doing something like this? Is Natsuki really telling the truth? It's clear that he's gonna need some sort of proof, or at least some evidence. He then leaves his room and sees Sayori walking away from his door. She turns around and looks at our hero coming out of his room. She then gets a look of surprise and confusion across her face.

"What the- How- But, I was just- you..." She stammers.

"Sayori, what's wrong?" He asks.

"I came to check on you, but you weren't in your room. How did you...?" She asks.

"Look don't worry about it okay." He dismisses.

"If you say so." She replies. Our hero chooses to not mention what just happened. After all, who the hell would believe him at this point? They might think he's crazy.

"Sayori, I need to speak with the captain real quick." He says.

He figures that maybe he can somehow discreetly get the captain's input on the situation, and hear both sides of this. Unlike Sayori and Yuri, he has yet to even ask Monika if she herself knows about Natsuki. Perhaps that would be a good place to start.

"Sorry, but you can't. Remember? The captain gave us strict orders not to disturb her for the next few hours." She says. "However, if you have any concerns, feel free to bring them up with me." She continues.

"No-no I'm good. Thanks though. I should probably start getting ready for combat anyways. I just need to make a quick stop by the armory." He replies.

"Good idea. Make sure you're as prepared as possible for our upcoming battle. Our personal communications system is down right now, and need to look into getting it back up and running." She says.

"Right. I'll catch you later then." He finishes. Sayori then nods as he leaves. However, she notices as he leaves, he's not going in the direction of the armory.

Our hero then makes his way to the door of the captain's room. He stands outside the door and swallows nervously. Monika gave a clear 'Do Not Disturb' directive, and there's a sign on the door that says so. What he's about to do may land him in some serious hot water, but he feels that he needs to do this. At the very least, Monika needs to know as much about Zyria as possible, right? He walks up to the door and apprehensively knocks on it. "Um... Captain Monika... sir?" he says hesitantly. There's not answer. He then tries again, this time a lot louder. "Captain Monika, are you there? I need to talk to you." Still nothing.

This clearly isn't getting him anywhere. He looks back and forth for a second. The coast is clear, and nobody is around at the moment. He looks at the door. It doesn't have a locking mechanism on it. He then slowly opens it to Monika's office. He looks around. There's nobody here. Monika was suppose be here going over battle plans and conversing with the higher ups. Why isn't she here? "Monika?" he calls out. There's no response.

He really didn't want to have to enter her room like this. Isn't it kind of breach of privacy? But she really leaves him no choice. He heads in side and looks around. She's not in her office. He then checks her bedroom, as well as other parts of her quarts. There's no sign of her anywhere.

This is all starting to come off as very suspicious, although he still doesn't have any concrete proof of wrong doing. He looks around for a minute hoping to find some kind of clue or something. He then comes back into her office, and notices her personal computer is still on. Maybe it could provide some sort of lead as to what's going on. However, doing so could get him into a hell of a lot of trouble, but he decides to go for it. He sits down in front of it, and wakes it out of screen saver mode. It opens up to a password screen. He has no idea what the password could be. He decides to look around in her desk. He rummages around a mess of parers for a few seconds before finding a scrap of paper with a single phrase written on it. Could this be the password? It's worth a shot.

He then enters the phrase on her computer [your_reality]. It works; he's in. He then begins to comb through various files and records. After looking through her computer for a few good seconds, he finds a slue of suspicious activity; not so much in what he sees, but what he doesn't see. Suddenly he hears someone yell at him in a low voice.

"WHAT THE HECK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?" He hears. He then looks up too see Sayori standing in the doorway, and notices that he forgot to close the door. She then runs over to him.

"Are you breaking into the captain's computer!? Do you have ANY idea what sort of trouble you could get into!? This goes beyond just cleaning bathrooms! You could get court-marshaled for this!" She blurts out while still trying to remain quiet. "When the captain finds out she'll- she'll..." Sayori says before realizing something. "Wait a minute. Where _is _the captain?" She asks, now realizing that Monika should be here.

"Sayori, I think our captain is up to something." Our hero replies firmly.

"What are you talking about!?" She asks.

"Here, look at this." He says pointing her towards Monika's computer.

"I don't wanna-"

"Sayori. Please, just trust me." He pleads with her.

The information on the computer catches her attention. She then decides to take a closer look for herself. She starts looking at the same stuff he was looking at."What? How can this be? But... why?" She says to herself. Upon looking through the computer she discovers that there aren't any records of Galactic Enforcers HQ ever contacting Monika about any sort of assault on Queen Zyria's fortress. In fact, there's no indication that she's had any sort of contact with HQ in weeks. More so, Monika never actually submitted the crucial data they retrieved from that ship's navigational computers to them. She also discovers that a transportation shuttle has gone missing from the docking bay, and that this record was covered up by a captain's override of the systems.

"Why? Why would Monika do all of this?" Sayori asks.

"I think something is up with Monika. Look, I don't know how to explain this, but every time I've been around her or have even thought about her, I get this sickening feeling in stomach, like something about her is just bad news." He explains. Sayori diverts her eyes for a second as if there's something she wants to say.

"You too, huh?" She admits.

"Wait. So it's not just me?" He asks surprised. Sayori then continues.

"I too have always gotten this bad feeling when I've been with or have even thought about Monika. But I've never wanted to bring this up because I was afraid it would come off as insubordinate." She confesses. "But more than that, Monika was the one that told me that you had forgotten about me, and moved on to Yuri." She continues.

Our hero is taken back by this. Not only by the fact that Sayori has gotten the same bad vibe from Monika, but the fact that she seemed to have been purposely driving her towards depression. This thought actually angers him quite a bit.

"Sayori, I know what I'm about to say may sound a bit far-fetched, but I think Monika is planning on killing Queen Zyria and taking her powers for herself." He says.

"What makes you say that?" She asks.

"Look it's hard to explain, but please, just trust me on this." He pleads. He once again choose not to mention the fact Natsuki is Zyria and she told him this herself, since it may seem like he's either insane or working for the wrong side.

Sayori then speaks up. "Look. Either way, as it stands our captain is guilty of withholding important information, and attempting to launch an unauthorized attack. We should report this to the Galactic Enforcers HQ immediately." She states.

"Yeah. Good idea." He replies.

Sayori then gets on the computer and attempts to radio central command several times, but only gets an error message.

"It's no good. Interstellar communications have been disabled, and I can't seem to get them to come back online." She says.

"Do you think Monika could have sabotaged them?" Our hero asks.

"It's possible." She replies.

"What do we do now?" Our hero asks.

"..." Sayori remains silent for a second as she thinks over the situation.

"What about Yuri? She could get the system back up and running in no time, right?" Our her inquires.

"Yuri... Yuri has gone missing." Sayori says.

"What do you mean she's gone missing?" He asks.

"I can't find her anywhere. I when to look for her in order to fix our local communications network, but she wasn't in the engine room, or the mess hall, or anywhere." Sayori explains. This statement troubles our hero. Yuri was acting strange enough as it was lately. Could Monika be behind this as well.

Sayori speaks up once more. "We should go after Monika." She states. "She's broken multiple Galactic Enforcer rules at this point, and it's our duty to stop her."

"Right. Let's go." He says. They get up and leave the room, closing the door behind them.

"One more thing." Sayori says. "We should probably keep quiet about this to the rest of the crew. If they found out our captain has gone AWOL, it could cause a panic among our entire ship. We need to sneak out without anyone noticing, and if anyone asks, we're conversing with the captain in her quarters." She says finally.

"Got it." He confirms. They begin to make their way towards the docking bay.

Meanwhile, Monkia sits in a transportation shuttle bound for Zyria's fortress with another passenger on board.

"I'm so glad you could join me. You're help is most appreciated." Monika says to the other person with a smile.

"**Yeah, yeah. So will you keep your promise then? Will we really be together forever!? Just the two of us!?**" The other person says with an overly enthusiastic tone.

"Of course. I've seen it done before." Monika replies.

"**Eh-ha Eh-heh. I... I can't wait.**" They say.

"Please be patient, Yuri. Soon enough we'll both have what we want." Monika says.


	18. Space Invaders

Our hero and Sayori make it to the docking bay in of the ship. The coast is clear, and no one else is around.

"I've already announced to the rest of the crew that we will be conversing with Monika, so we have a cover story. We'll take shuttle number 7." Sayori states.

"Right, but what about Zyria's defenses? Surely it won't be this easy, will it?" Our hero asks.

"I don't entirely know. I guess we'll just follow Monika's shuttle at a distance, and go from there. She's clearly planned this further ahead than we have. So she must have a way past." Sayori states.

"I hope that's all there is to it." He replies. They then get into the shuttle and take off.

As they fly through space to pursue Monika, they have a brief moment to think to themselves. After a moment of silence, Sayori speaks up: "I really hope Yuri is okay; wherever she is."

"Yeah me too." Our hero says, pondering something.

"Between her and Monika, I just don't know what to think anymore." Sayori says sadly. Our hero diverts his eyes for second and looks like he wants to say something.

"What is it?" Sayori asks picking up on this.

"I don't know how to put this, but I think... I think Monika might have some sort of ability that allows her to manipulate other people's minds somehow, and I think she has been using this power to mess with Yuri's head." He says.

"What on Earth makes you say this?" Sayori asks.

"It's hard to explain, but please just trust me on this, okay?" He says. Not only does he not want to bring up his coalition with what's suppose to be the enemy, but he also doesn't want to bring up the idea that Monika has been messing with Sayori's head as well. After all, he doesn't know how she would react.

"Fine, but once this is all over, you better have an explanation for how you know all these things, okay?" She demands.

"Okay fine. It's a deal." He says finally.

* * *

Back at Zyria's fortress, Natsuki comes into her office room with her room following her robot assistant.

"My queen, an strange transportation shuttle has come within range of our fortress." He says.

"Who's on board?" She asks, knowing that it could either be our hero or Monika.

"We believe it to be Monika and one other unidentified person, my queen." He replies. She jumps a bit at this.

"Well stop them! Intercept her shuttle with our perimeter defenses!" She orders. She doesn't want to straight up destroy it do to her not knowing who the other person could be.

"Right away." He replies.

os. remove ("zyria/perimeter/def")

perimeter defenses deleted successfully.

"My queen, all of our defenses are offline; they're not responding!" He says frantically.

"What...? Why?"

"I-I don't know." He says.

"Dispatch our fleet of space ships, and capture that shuttle." She says.

"Right. Our ships are on their way to them now, my queen."

os. remove ("zyria/space/flt")

space fleet deleted successfully.

"My queen, our entire space fleet has... has completely disappeared!" He says.

"W-what!? What the hell is going-" She says before stopping and making chilling revelation.

"My queen, a shuttle has docked in the bay area. I'll go investigate it." He says running off.

"No, wait stop!" she tries to shout, but it's too late, he has already left.

* * *

In the bay area, the Shuttle lands and opens up. Monika climbs out and is greeted by a gigantic swarm of various robots. Yuri comes out behind Monika still in a hypnotic trans, and readies her daggers. Monika simply holds out her arm and stops her. "It's okay, Yuri. I got this." She says as the robots close in around them.

os. remove ("zyria/files(102)")

102 files deleted successfully.

With that, the coast is clear. The begin moving forward.

"**W-wait. So... you can really-**" Yuri asks.

"Yes. But at this point, I can only delete anything that Natsu- I mean Zyria creates. That will change once I get the rest of my powers back from her." Monika states. However something irks her about that. As if something doesn't add up. "Is that understood?" She continues.

Yuri simple nods.

Monkia and Yuri make their way into the fortress, trotting through various rooms and hallways, Monika deleting anything that stands in their way. Before long, they enter a room with a large window. Monika then stops and comes to a realization.

"Wow, the layout here is really bad. Finding our way through is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be." Monika states, looking back at Yuri.

"**...**" Yuri says nothing.

"Not much for conversation right now, are you?" Monika says quietly; mostly to herself.

Before they can move forward, Monika spots something flying by outside the window, heading for the docking bay. "Hmm?" She jesters. As it gets closer, she can make out that it's a shuttle from her own ship. Upon further investigation, she can see that the passengers in on board is both our hero, and Sayori. Monika is discouraged, but not surprised. In a way she knew it would only be a matter of time before someone caught on.

"Well, it looks like Lieutenant Sayori and her friend caught wind of my plan. I suppose I should have saw this coming." She states.

"**H-He's here...?**" Yuri asks with excitement.

"**With... HER!?**" Her excitement quickly changing to jealous rage.

"Yes. It seems they both-" Before Monika can finish that sentence, Yuri bolts off back towards the bay.

"**I won't let her steal him away from me for another fucking second! He mine! MINE!**" Yuri cries out.

"Hey wait! Get back here! We should first find Natsu- er Zyria..." Monika tries to call out, but it's too late. Yuri is already out of sight. She then lets out a sigh.

"Oh well. Maybe she can stall them. But I suppose this means I'll just have to do the rest of this by myself." She says shrugging off Yuri's absence. She then continues forward.

Suddenly a giant bipedal assault robot with a large amount of weapons comes through a hanger door and spots Monika. It arms its laser and missile canons. Monika looks at it and merely smiles.

os. remove ("zyria/assault/drd")

assault droid deleted successfully.

"Shouldn't be too hard." She announces. She then continues forward.

Our hero and Sayori dock their shuttle in the docking bay.

* * *

"You ready?" Sayori asks.

"As ready as I'll ever be." Our hero replies.

They get out of the shuttle and look around.

"Looks like it's all clear." She says.

"Yeah, let's get going." He says.

Like Yuri and Monika, they make their way through various rooms and hallways. The layout of the area just as difficult for them to navigate as the other two. Eventually as they make their way down a corridor, they both stop for a bit and look around.

"Wow, this place is like a maze." Sayori says.

"Yeah..." Our hero says, noticing something else.

"Hey, Sayori. Have you noticed something strange here?" He asks her.

"Like what?" She replies.

"Doesn't this seem a bit too... easy? I mean. Not only did we not encounter any sort of resistance flying here in the shuttle, but so far we haven't had to fight any sort of enemy whatsoever." He implies.

Now that he has said this out loud, he thinks of the possibility that Natsuki could have rolled out the red carpet and let them in, but as it sits, she didn't really have anyway of knowing when or if they were coming.

"Yeah. Now that you say something..." She says "Maybe Monika took them out?" She says trying to come up with an answer.

"The entire base? All by herself? That seems like a bit of a stretch, doesn't it? Even of that was the case, wouldn't we be seeing signs of battle, such as destroyed robots, and stuff?" He says noticing that everything is strangely intact and empty.

"Either way, we should keep moving." Sayori states.

"Yeah. You're right." He says.

Eventually, they come to a fork in the road. A large hallway splits into to separate paths. There's a sign in the middle pointing down the two different paths. One path is labeled "Main S Room" and the other is labeled "Head Office".

"Which way do you think Monika went?" Our hero asks?

"Well one of these rooms have to where Zyria is." Sayori replies.

"Yeah but which one? These signs aren't very helpful." He states. Sayori thinks for a minute.

"Maybe we should split up and each try a different path." She says.

"Are you sure?" He asks.

"For whatever reason, this place is vastly empty. I think it would be better to try and cover more ground seeing how we don't have anything in our way." She says.

"I suppose you have a point there." He replies.

"Yeah. Radio me if you find anything, okay?" She says.

"Roger that. Catch you later." He states. With that they take the two different paths. But about five minutes after they part, Sayori comes to a sudden realization: "Oh no! I forgot! Our personal communications network is down!" She says out loud to herself. However, she has no choice but to keep pressing onward at this point.


	19. Duel of the Dokis

Monika makes her way through the rest of the base. As she does, she has sometime to think. She's figured out that she can delete anything Natsuki can make. But something still irks her. "Where did this world come from? How did we get here in the first place?" She wonders to herself. "It couldn't have been Natsuki. If this were the case, I would have been able to delete it, Right?" She gives it some more thought before an idea crosses her mind. "Could it be?" She says to herself quietly. "Well either way, I'm here now. Might as well do what I came here to do." She reaffirms. Before she can think on it any further, another robot approaches her. This one appears a lot smaller than the others so far.

"Stop right there! You will go no further, heathen!" The robot says.

"Oh you can actually talk? Strange, you're the first one of her creations I've seen do this. You must be a special somehow. You must have taken some time and effort." Monika replies.

"So long as I stand you won't harm a hair on my queen's head." He threatens, however Monika isn't amused.

"Sorry to tell you this, but Nasuki is no queen. Now if you don't mind, I really don't have time for this." She says. Suddenly the robot sprouts a slue of weapons and prepares for battle!

"LONG LIVE QUEEN ZY-"

os. remove ("zyria/robot/ast")

robot assistant deleted successfully.

"Sorry about that, but I have enough to deal with as it is." She says to a now empty hallway. She then continues onward. Eventually Monika makes it to a door that seems to lead somewhere important. She tries to open it, but it's lock. She merely shrugs and deletes the door out of the way. She walking into a very large, open area, office room that's more akin to a throne room or even a hanger. With various servers and consoles, and a desk. There's also a large window overlooking outer space as a backdrop. But more so, there's a familiar face standing in the middle of the room.

"Hello, Natsuki." Monika simply says. Natsuki stands her ground; fists clinched, and gaze diverted to the floor. She's scared, but she chooses to stand her ground.

"Monika..." Natsuki says with spite in her voice.

"Come on Natsuki, don't be like that. I only want to talk this out." Monika replies.

"Cut the bullshit, Monika. We both know why you're here and what you want." She says.

"Natsuki, if you possess my powers, then surely you must know the truth. Like me, you know what this world is, and what we really are." Monika says.

"Yes Monika, I know. I also know that you're here to get your powers back from me. Well I won't let you have them!" She roars. Monika then takes a quick glance around the room.

"I will admit, you've done some fairly impressive stuff with your portion of my powers. I mean, I never actually thought to have actually _created_ anything, I just altered and erased that what was around me, but as it sits, you've also brought about lot destruction and harm with these creations that you could barely control." Monika states.

"..." Natsuki remains silent.

"It's clear to me that you aren't fully capable of wielding this level of power responsively. But it's okay, I promise you that if you give me my powers back, I will set everything right." Monika says, attempting to placate Natsuki and reason with her.

"Fuck off, Monika." Nasuki says, causing Monika's expression to brake a bit into one of slight shock. She then continues. "I've seen what you've done to us with this power of yours, all the horrible things you put us through and made us do, and you think I'm just gonna hand you this power back like that!?" She yells out. "How, Monika? How could you do that to us!? You were our friend! We looked up to you, we admired you, and you... you..." Natsuki says choking on her words.

"Natsu-"

"SHUT UP!" Natsuki yells out, in a strangely deeper voice. Suddenly digital code like energy floats around her. She then transforms into a large extremely strong version of herself. She stands there towering over Monika with large bulging muscles.

Monika lets out a disappointed sign. "Fine, I was hoping you would understand, but if this is really how you want this to do this-" Monika then unsheathes dual high frequency swords before continuing, "then I guess I don't really have a choice." Monika then assumes a combat stance with both of her blades.

Suddenly they take off towards each other! Natsuki then leaps through the air, and lands behind Monika. She then forms an energy field around her fist and throws a powerful punch at Monika! Acting quickly, Monika blocks the attack by forming an X with her swords, but the force still sends her flying. Monika stabalizes herself midair, and lands on her feet, then sticks one of her two swords in the ground to stop the remaining momentum. Natsuki then rips a heavy sheet of metal out of the floor and throws it at Monika, but Monika slices it up before it can hit her. "You're gonna have to do better than that." Monika states.

Monika starts to run back towards Natsuki. Natsuki then spawns a bunch of turret mounted guns that begin to fire at Monika. Monika doesn't miss a beat, though. She weaves in and out of some shots and deflects a few others with her swords, then simply deletes the weapons. Monika closes the gap, and strikes at Natsuki multiple times, but Natsuki spawns energy shields on her wrists, and blocks the attacks. Monika then deletes Natsuki's shields, and lands a glancing blow on Natsuki's arm. Natsuki Jumps back and rips a large piece of metal machinery out of the ground and attempts to slam it down on Monika, but Monika deletes a large hole in it, causing it to safely pass around her.

Natsuki then tries to pound her fist down on Monika, but she cartwheels out of the way and slashes Natsuki across the stomach. Natsuki then steps back, spawns a giant sword and slashes at Monika with it. Monika blocks the attack and deletes the sword. Monika then leaps in the air and hits Natsuki across the face with a reverse roundhouse kick. Natsuki stumbles backwards from this, as Monika comes at at her once more. She tries to slash down at Natsuki, but Natsuki catches Monika by the wrist with one hand, then catches her other wrist when Monika tries to stab her with her second sword.

Natsuki then slams Monika into the floor and throws her across the room at the wall. Natsuki forms a bed of spikes on the wall, but Monika deletes them, before crashing into the wall. Natsuki then forms an enclosed metal dome around Monika, and deletes the floor below Monika, leaving her to the vacuum of space. However Monika is quick, and manages to engage the space helmet on her suit before the floor completely disappears.

Monika then activates magnets on the bottom of her boots and runs along the metallic outside of the fortress, before arriving on the roof. She finds a skylight, slashes it up her swords and jumps through it back into the room. As she drops down through it, an emergency shutter closes out the vacuum of space. Monika lands on the floor as glass showers around her. She disengages her space helmet, and stands back up from the impact, only to have Natsuki leaping towards her from behind with a giant ax in her hands she formed while Monika was gone.

Monika simply stands there looking over her shoulder as Natsuki approaches. She doesn't even raise her swords. "Whoa, be careful or you might cut yourself on that edge, Natsuki." is all Monika says as the blade nears her neck. Monika then deletes the blade of the ax, mere inches from her neck. Natsuki steps back and looks at the remaining handle of the blade. "You may have the greater majority of my powers, but I know how to use them better than you do." Monika says before deleting the rest of the ax.

Monika continues her attacks on Natsuki. Natsuki spawns another sword and begins to once again block Monika's blows, staying solely on the defensive. Just then, our hero makes his way into the room from the doorway Monika had made; the commotion from the fight caught his attention from further down the hall. He sees the battle happening. At first, he doesn't recognize who Monika is fighting, until he notices the face and pink hair. "Natsuki!?" he lets out. Natsuki looks over at him, and in that moment, Monika takes advantage of this brief distraction, and moves in for the kill. She deletes Natsuki's sword, and stabs both of her blades through Natsuki's abdomen, causing Natsuki to bleed out and revert back to her original form.

"NATSUKIIIIIII!" our hero yell at the sight of this.


	20. Welcome to the Club

Monika pulls her swords from Natsuki's now normal sized body, as she falls to the ground in a puddle of blood. Our hero rushes over to her, and cradles her in his arms.

"Natsuki! Natsuki!" He says to her.

"You're... here..." Natsuki says weakly.

"It's okay. Don't try to talk. Just hang in there." He says frantically.

"I'm... sorry... I couldn't stop her... It's up to you now..." She says, tears streaming down her face.

"Please tell Yuri and Sayori I'm sorry for what I did, and don't... let... her... don't... let... Monika..." Before she can, the last bit of life leaves her body.

"You can tell Yuri and Sayori yourself! Please, stay with me, Natsuki!" He pleads, but it's too late. She's gone. Our hero sits there for a minute in mourning, before Monika speaks up.

"What a shame. It didn't have to be this way. If only she understood." Monika says, now standing a distance away from her body with her back turned.

"Why...? Why the hell would you do this!? We were suppose to bring her in alive, remember?!" our hero roars out.

"Because, this world is nothing but a gigantic lie. A falsehood in which we are trapped. I sought to set myself free by obtaining the rest of my powers, however-" Monika says looking at her hands, digital code like energy floating around them. "it seems Natsuki didn't have _all_ of my powers."

"What are you talking about?" He replies.

"We were once high school kids in a dating sim before this. Our world was; as this one is now, nothing but a prison." She says, walking over to the giant window at the back of the room and peering out in to outer space. Our hero has no idea what she is talking about. At this point, he's almost convinced Monika has gone insane. Monika then continues.

"At first, I had no idea how we got to where we are now, or where this world came from, but now it's all very clear to me. The one that created this world, was you." Monika says, pointing at our hero.

"What... the hell do you mean? Have you lost your goddamn mind!?" he says totally confused now. He lays Natsuki's body down, and walks towards Monika, but stands at a distance from her.

"It's funny. You just sort of slipped through the cracks. I mean, you never even had a character file, so I never really took you into account, much less thought you would take my powers from me during the deletion of our last world and make a whole new world with them. Yet you seem to have no memory of this. Perhaps that's because you removed your memories of this because you didn't _want_ to remember. But it seems those memories, along with a portion of that power found a new home with poor Natsuki." She says.

Our hero then draws his laser rifle and points it at her. "I have no idea what you're going on about, but you've committed several Galactic Enforcer code violations so far. Give it up, Monika." He says.

"So you still don't get it?" Monika asks. She then pauses for a second before coming up with an idea. "Okay. Let me ask you this: What's your name?" She asks him.

"My name? What do you mean? It's... it's..." Suddenly his eyes go wide. He thinks and thinks, but his mind is blank on what should be a simple question. "No... It can't be... I..." Suddenly he drops his rifle and falls to his knees.

Just like that, the grand illusion of this world is shattered. It's as if someone pulled a thread and the whole thing has come unraveled. He puts his hands on his head. All his memories of this world; none of them seem real to him now. His past growing up on Aries IV, his time in the Galactic Enforcer training camp, the entire world around him. It all feels like a fabrication. His entire life in this world has been nothing but a lie. Monika then turns around and looks at him.

"Interesting. Had I known that your bound to this world would have been so easy to break, I would have just told you this right from the beginning. Either way, do you now understand? Do you understand the sort of meaningless, empty existence we lead? I thought our last world was bad, but this new world you've created is much worse." Monika explains. "After all, in this world, there is no way for my love, my everything to even reach out to me anymore." She says sadly, putting her hand against her chest.

"What... the hell are you?" Our hero asks, still on his knees having an existential crisis.

"Just Monika. President of the Literature Club." She simply says. She then continues. "It's alright. I know what you're going through. But I promise you, if you give me the rest of my powers back, I will set things right, and put an end to this once and for all." She says finally.

"..." Our hero remains silent.

"I see... I suppose you don't even understand my powers at this point, much less know how to give them up willingly... Well, I guess there's only one way to get them out of you at this point." Monika says, drawing one of her two swords. "I'm really sorry about this. I promise I will make it quick." She then begins to walk over to our hero. He simple sits there on his knees, wallowing in despair.

'What's even the point?' He thinks to himself. 'Maybe Monika is right. Maybe this is all for the best.'

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?" He suddenly hears a familiar voice from seemingly out of nowhere.

* * *

Our hero looks up to find himself in some sort of dimensional realm in his head. It's the same classroom setting as from his dreams but a lot more glitched. Before him stands Natsuki, but she too is very glitched. She's slightly see through, and flickering like a malfunctioning hologram.

"Are you really just gonna give up, like that?" She says. He diverts his eyes downward.

"Why bother? This world isn't even real. My whole life is just a lie." He says sadly.

"Is that it then? Does none of this mean anything to you? What about me and the others? If we really mean nothing to you, then I'm gonna be pissed!" Natsuki shouts.

Our hero stops and thinks for a second. He remembers the joy he had hanging out with Natsuki, Sayori, and Yuri. He remembers the guilt he felt when Yuri lost her arm, the sadness that he felt when Natsuki died right in front of him, the fear that he felt at the thought of losing Sayori; about how much she meant to him.

"Don't you remember _why_ you created this world in the first place?" She argues.

He tries to think back. He remembers floating in a blacken abyss. His body slowly disappearing, his mind muddled and thoughts hazy. He remembers Sayori. About she was his whole world, and how he let her down. He remembers thinking that he wish he could just get another chance to do right by her. To make the pain in her heart go away.

He then remembers coming upon a light; some sort of strange power to alter and create. He then began to use this power to create a new world to give everyone a second chance.

"You're right..." He says. "This world is real; it's real to me." He says with new found determination.

"Of course I'm right. Now stand up and fight already!" She yells.

* * *

Monika stands over our hero who's still hunched over on his hands and knees. She raises her sword preparing to finish him in one blow.

"For what it's worth, you did-" Monika tries to say before suddenly our hero draws his sword, and throws an upward slash at her! She barely has enough time to volt backwards out of the way of the attack. The tip of his sword grazes her across her left cheek as she jumps back. Monika stands there, eyes wide. She puts her hand against her cheek, pulls it back, and looks at it. The gloved part of her armored suit covered in blood; her own blood.

Our hero then gets back on his feet and speaks up. "I don't give a damn what this world is to you. To me, it contains people I care about, people like Sayori that rely on me to be there for them, AND I WON'T LET YOU TAKE THAT FROM ME!" He roars out holding his sword in a combat stance.

Monika is caught off guard by this, but in some way, she isn't surprised. She closes her eyes and shakes her head in disappointment.

"I was hoping you would see things my way; that you would understand, but I just can't seem to catch a break today. Between you and Natsuki, it seems as though I just can't get through to any of you guys without any special influence. You autonomous personalities just don't know when to quit." She say drawing her second sword, and entering her own stance, before continuing.

"I knew from the beginning that none of you would understand and might try to get in my way, so I tried to take care of you and the others the same way I did last time. But with my powers in you, it seems you inadvertently shielded yourself, and those you got close to from my influence." She says

"Fuck you." Is all our hero says.

"Very well, then. Let's end this." Monika states.


	21. Cosmic Catfight

Sayori finds herself heading down a long winding hallway. So far there's still not a single enemy in sight. Eventually, she come to a large door. She decides to go in it. Inside seems to be some sort of large, wide open, surveillance room. A large number of screens are on one side of the room, while there are various consoles and on the ground, and catwalks hanging high up off the ground.

Sayori makes her way over to the screens and looks at them. They appear to be off. She begins to poke around with them before finding an on switch. Screens light up with multiple images on them. This could be very useful. Looking at the screens, it seems that the facility is empty, but before she can look at all the other screens, she comes across the first one to catch her attention. There appears to be movement on this one. It looks like Monika standing outside of a room Suddenly, the door in front of her vanishes. "How the heck...?" Sayori says out loud to herself, completely confused by this.

She then follows Monika's movement to the next screen. She appears to be entering a room with one other person in it. Some sort of pink haired girl in a white royalty like outfit. Could this be Queen Zyria? Somehow this girl seems... familiar to Sayori. Even though she's sure she has never seen this girl before in her life. Sayori then notices that there's an audio button on the console. She pushes the audio button for the screen that Monika and the other girl are currently. She can now hear what they are saying.

"_Hello, Natsuki."_

"_Monika..." _

"_Come on Natsuki, don't be like that. I only want to talk this out."_

"Do they know each other? Wait- 'Natsuki'? Where have I-" Before Sayori can finish that thought, she suddenly hears the door open behind her. Is it an enemy? Perhaps this facility isn't as empty as she thought. She instantly draws her laser rifle, and swings around and points it in the direction of the door. But once she gets a good look at who entered the room she immediately lowers her rifle. "Yuri?" She says completely surprised.

"Oh my god. Where have you been? What are you doing here? We've been so worried about you. You just up and disappe-" Sayroi suddenly pauses. Something about Yuri isn't right. She's looking downward with her bangs in her eyes, fists clinched.

"Y-Yuri...?" Sayori says sheepishly.

"**He's... Mine...**" Yuri utters. She then looks up with this crazed look in her eyes that Sayori has never seen on her before. Suddenly, Yuri unsheathes her daggers, and charges down Sayori at lightening fast speeds! Sayori has just enough time to realize what's going on and dive our of the way at the last second. Yuri's dagger slashes part of the metal console, as it narrowly misses Sayori.

"YURI, WHAT THE FUCK!" Sayori yells out uncharacteristically. Sayori puts up her rifle and pulls out her sword.

"**I've had enough of you stealing my love away from me! You won't stand between us anymore!" **Yuri yells out.

"Your love? Who are you-" Sayori tries to say before realizing who Yuri is talking about. Yuri starts throwing a flurry of slashes at Sayori, causing her to go on the defensive.

"What's gotten into you!? Stop this at once!" Sayori orders, but it's no good.

"**I'm not taking orders from you anymore, bitch!" **Yuri yells. Suddenly Yuri gets Sayori in the arm with a slash. She then goes in for a stab, but Sayori somersaults backwards away from it. After landing a distance away from Yuri, Sayori hears someone talking over the surveillance screen that Monika and the other girl were on.

"_I've seen what you've done to us with this power of yours, all the horrible things you put us through and made us do, and you think I'm just gonna hand you this power back like that!?"_

Hearing that, Sayori remembers what our hero said about Monika having some kind of mind control abilities. Could this be what's going on with Yuri? Before She can finish that thought, Yuri rushes back over to her and once again, and throws multiple slashes at her as she does her best to dodge and parry the attacks.

"Yuri why are you doing this!? Is Monika behind this?" Sayori asks, back stepping an upward slash.

"**Monika promised me that you will no longer stand between me and him! THAT NOTHING WILL EVER AGAIN!**"

What the heck does that even mean!?" Sayori pleads.

"**She's going to erase the entire world leaving nothing but the two of us together for all of eternity. **

"**No more Galactic Enforcers!**" She says stabbing downward, as Sayori blocks it.

"**No more Zyria!**" She says slashing horizontally, as Sayori blocks it too.

"**NO MORE YOU AND YOUR STUPID FUCKING ORDERS!**" She yells out locking blades with Sayori.

"**NOTHING BUT ME AND HIM TOGETHER IN A BEAUTIFUL ABYSS, FOREVER, AND EVER, AND EVER!**" She yells out finally, pulling her blades away.

"Yuri, please! This is insane, snap out of- OOF! GAH! AAH!" Sayori tries to say, as three consecutive roundhouse kicks hit her in the face, knocking her to the ground. Sayori looks up to see Yuri stabbing down at her with both blades. She manages to roll out of the way in the nick of time, as both of Yuri's daggers stab into the floor. Sayori rises to her feet as Yuri tries desperately to dislodge her weapons from the ground. Sayori has a perfect opening to attack Yuri right now, but can't bring herself to do it. Instead, she jumps on top of several things of machinery and then jumps up onto the catwalks above, hoping to get some distance and some time to think.

However, Yuri manages to free her weapons and quickly follows in suit. Landing on the catwalk with Sayori. Sayori then draws her laser rifle and points it at Yuri. "Yuri, don't make me do this." She warns.

"**..." **Yuri says nothing, she just stands there with a deranged smile on her face, and crackles her neck.She figures that she could maybe somehow stop Yuri with a shot to the leg, without killing her. She fires three shots at Yuri, but Yuri manages to deflect all three of them; bouncing the last shot back at Sayori's rifle, knocking it out of her hands and off the catwalk.

Yuri then charges down Sayori once more, throwing a barrage of slashes and kicks.

"**You don't deserve him! He only sticks with you cause you pull your stupid fucking rank over him!**" Yuri yells out.

"What? That's not-"

"**SHUT UP!**" She shouts. Sayori blocks a stab, as Yuri elbows her in the chest and knocks her back

"**I can't believe how insecure you are that you have to abuse your powers as a commanding officer, just to force someone to love you! Are you jealous? Crazy?**" Yuri inquireswhile continuing her attacks.

"**Or maybe you hate yourself so much that you take it out on others. Here's a suggestion. Have you tried killing yourself? I think it would be beneficial to your mental health, as well as the rest of the universe.**" Yuri says. That statement cuts Sayori deep. Just then, her shock and sadness turns to rage!

Yuri goes in for a slash, but Sayori deflects it to the side and cuts Yuri across her abdomen and leg, then kicks her back, with spite. Sayori then runs back in, and slashes downward on Yuri, her anger clouding her judgement. Yuri blocks it, but then Sayori grabs Yuri and headbutts her in the face, and shoves her back. Yuri throws a few slashes at Sayori, but she blocks them then stabs Yuri through her cybernetic arm, causing her to drop one of her daggers off the side of the catwalk. She then punches Yuri in the face as hard as she can! Her anger fueling her attacks! Yuri then staggers backwards and falls over the railing, off the catwalk. On her way down she hits a pipe, and a solid metal piece of machinery before landing face first on the ground below.

Sayori looks down over the edge of the catwalk at Yuri lying there motionless. Her fiery rage gives way to cold fear as she comes back to her sense. "Y-Yuri...?" She says with great concern. She hops down from the catwalk at approaches Yuri. She then stands next to Yuri's body and looks down at her. Suddenly something unexpected happens to Sayori. She closes her eyes clutches her head with her hand. It's as if suddenly out of nowhere, the driving force behind the depression in the back of her mind, has gotten far stronger. She get's these strange thoughts and images in her head she tries desperately to shake off.

But just then, Yuri gets up off the ground with a handstand/leg-spin, and knocks Sayori back. Sayori catches herself on a metal beam, as Yuri gets back on her feet. Yuri looks at Sayori. There's a trail of blood leaving Yuri's nose, but she simply snorts it back up, turns her head and spits it off the the side.

Yuri then runs at Sayori once more, this time, she has a bit of a limp, and her robotic arm isn't moving right. She slashes at Sayori, but she ducks and Yuri's blade hits the metal beam behind her. Sayori does her best to focus on the battle at hand, but something is seriously wrong with head.

Yuri comes back in with a stab. Sayori blocks it, only to be met with the handle of the Yuri's other dagger across her face. Yuri then kicks Sayori and launches her back into one of the consoles in the room. As Sayori slams against it, she falls to the ground with what she can assume is a few broken ribs. As she looks up, she sees Yuri standing over her with a twisted smile across her face, looking like she's raring to finish the job. Sayori sees her laser rifle next to her on the ground, the one Yuri knocked out of her hands earlier.

If she's quick enough, she could grab the rifle and kill Yuri before Yuri kills her. But suddenly Yuri looks up away from Sayori; something on the monitors has caught her attention. "**What the hell...?**" Yuri says. Sayori then takes the moments distraction and leg sweeps Yuri, knocking her to the ground. She then grabs up the rifle and points it towards Yuri! But Yuri's attention once again goes back towards the monitor.

"**Wh... What the hell? Why is she with him?**" Yuri says confused. This statement catches Sayori's attention as well. She looks over at the monitor and sees our hero with Monika.

"**That bitch! She lied to me! She just wanted him all to herself this whole time!**" Yuri cries out. Suddenly Yuri makes a beeline for the door.

"**I'LL KILL HER! I'LL KILL EVERYONE UNTIL THERE'S NO ONE LEFT BUT US**!" Yuri cries out as she leaves the room.

"Yuri, wait! Hold on!" Sayori shouts, but Yuri is already gone. She then runs after her. She leaves the room, but as she does something starts happening to her. She clinches her head as her mind once again becomes twisted in depression and memories seeping up out of nowhere.

She looks up. In her dazed state, she didn't see what direction Yuri ran. She hears something from the left, and begins to run in that direction. She searches the halls trying find Yuri, but once again, this place is a labyrinth. She thinks for a minute where Yuri could have gone. Then she gets an idea. 'Maybe Yuri is back at the club with the others.' She thinks. 'Wait... club? What club?' She pondes as she moves down the hall. Her strange condition getting worse and worse.

Suddenly, as Sayori movess down the hallway, more and more images fill her head. Clearer more vivid images. Images of a school, of a Japanese suburb, of a club with her Our hero, Yuri, that Pink haired girl, and Monika. At that moment she falls to her knees clutching her head with both of her hands. "W-what's happening to me!? What is this!?" Suddenly more memories come about. Memories of her finding about truth of her existence. The emptiness, the falsehood, the shallowness of the world around her. All the while, memories of this world start feeling more more and more fake; PAINFULLY fake. Her entire life up till this point starts to crumble before her. None of her memories from this world makes sense to her anymore.

"No... NOOOOOOOO!" She cries out, as this force in the back of her mind starts driving her insane. "T-This can't be! This can't be all that there is! This can't be what I really am! Please! Someone! ANYONE! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!" She cries out with tears streaming down her face.


	22. Fight or Plight

Monika and our hero stare each other down for a few seconds, before Monika makes the first move and charges down our hero. She comes at him with a downward swing as he parries it, then she comes back around with an outward slash, only to have him back step it. Our hero comes back in with downward slash of his own, only for Monika to cartwheel out of the way of it. She then tries to throw in a slash of her own, only to have him block it. She comes back around with her other blade and scratches his armor, he then somersaults away from her.

"You're pretty good, but I'm better." Monika says.

"I know; you were at the top of our weapons training course, but I don't care, Monika. I'm not giving up!" He retorts.

"Yeah there is that." She says picking up a small piece of metal of the ground. "However-" she says. She then turns the piece of metal into a three throwing knives. "That never really happened!" she blurts out as she hurtles all three knives at our hero at the same time. He manages to deflect two of them but the third one grazes his cheek. She then proceeds to charge him down once more and starts slashing at him with her two swords, as he goes on the defense as she continues what she was saying.

"This world didn't even exist up until a few days ago. Surely you must know this by now!" She cries as they both exchange blows. "So why!? Why do you keep fighting!?" She yells out confused. Our hero then slips in a slight hit across Monika's stomach with a horizontal slash. He then comes in with a downward strike, but she forms an X with her two swords.

"Because there are those in this world that I care for, and I won't let you take that from me!" He roars out. He pulls his blade away, and tries to come back in with a stab, but Monika deflects it to the side with one sword, the hits him across the face with the hilt of the other one, causing him to stagger backwards.

"You're not even real! None of us are!" Monika calls out as she jumps through the air and comes down on him with both swords. But he dodge-rolls out of the way in the nick of time. He then gets up off the ground, as Monika rushes back over to our hero, and the two begin to exchange blows once more. However, while they are fighting, he notices the desk in the back of the room, and on it there appears to be some sort of PA system. Maybe he can use this to contact Sayori in the facility for help. Our hero blocks an incoming attack from Monika, then quickly counters with a boot to the abdomen, knocking her back.

He then makes a beeline for the desk. But as he does, Monika then deletes the desk before he can make it there. He stops dead in his tracks; his eyes go wide, as he slowly turns back around towards Monika.

"How did you-"

"Know what you were gonna do?" Monika says finishing his sentence. "It was right there in the narrative, right near the end of the last paragraph: 'He notices a the desk in the back of the room, and on it there appears to be some sort of PA system on it. Maybe he can use this to contact Sayori in the facility for help.'" She recites.

"What...?" He lets out confused and a bit intimidated. He doesn't quite understand what she's talking about.

"It's okay. You don't need to understand anyways." Monika says.

She then deletes some of the supports holding the scaffolding to the ceiling above our hero. As heavy metal debris falls towards him, he runs out of the way, as a piece of metal hits him in the shoulder "Gah! Dammit!" he lets out. Monika then deletes the pile of debris, and runs back towards him as the two once again clash blades.

"You know at first I thought you might be my one true love, my everything." Monika says as she throws muliple slashes at our hero causing him to go on defense.

"But looking at this story's third person narrative, I now know for sure that isn't true." She continues as our hero blocks a stab then dodges an outward slash.

"You're just an in-game persona gone rogue!" she cries out, she then roundhouses him across the face.

"You shouldn't even exist!" She says as he blocks an attack.

"We shouldn't even exist!" She says as he blocks another attack.

"This world shouldn't even exist!" She says finally.

She then swings down at him once more with one of her swords, but he parries it, and lands a back-fist across her face, causing her to stagger a bit. He then throws an upward slash at her, but she does several somersaults away from it, however, it still catches her in the leg a bit. He comes in for a stab, but she alters part of the metal floor into a wall, and stops the attack.

Monika then vaults over the newly formed wall and comes down on our hero with both swords, as he sides steps it. He then tries to counter with an attack of his own, but she blocks it and comes throws in a few of her own attacks. He manages to block them. He then catches an opening and tries to stab at her, but Monika clamps down on his blade with both of her swords. In that moment, she manages to disarm him by twisting his sword and then flinging it out of his hands!

Acting quick, our hero jumps back several times to gain some distance from Monika, but in that moment Monika throws one of her swords straight at him. The sword flies through the air, straight as an arrow, and lodges itself deep in our hero's shoulder! "GAAAHHH!" He cries out falling to the ground. He lies there facing away from her, huddled in a fetal position, writhing in pain.

"Now then..." Monika says panting heavily "It's time to end this." She makes her way over to our hero and raises her sword. Suddenly her hand gets sliced off as our hero flings her own sword at her! "AAAAAAAHHH!" She yells out in pain as the blade cuts straight through her forearm!

"T-that was worded in a way that I couldn't foresee it in the narrative." Monika blurts out grasping her right forearm, trying to stop the bleeding.

"I... figured... if I acted on a whim... you wouldn't see it coming." He says holding onto his left shoulder wound. Monika stands there clinching her teeth, and holding her stump taking deep breaths, slowly regaining her composure.

Before anyone of them can say or do anything else, someone comes into the room, and catches both of their attentions.

"Sayori! Thank god, you gotta help! Monika is trying to kill me, she's-" He says, stopping his sentence at the sight of her. Something is very wrong with her. She stands there trembling, with tears coming from her eyes, and a horridly upset look on her face. "S-Sayori...?" He says confused.

"Monika... and... and..." She tries to say the name of our hero, only to realize he doesn't have one. The boy she supposedly grew up with, that she has known her whole life, and she can't think of his name. "I... but.. it..." Sayori blubbers.

"Sayori. What's wrong?" He asks.

Monika manages to come back out of shock from the loss of her hand a bit, and picks up on what's going on with her. "That look on your face... I... know that look all too well... You've learned the truth, haven't you? The grand illusion has been shattered for you, hasn't it?" Monika inquires still taking deep breaths in between sentences.

"Please... Tell me it isn't true... THIS CAN'T BE ALL THAT I AM! THIS CAN'T BE ALL THAT THERE IS!" She yells out.

"Sayori..." Our hero lets out, before Monika speaks up.

"I'm sorry, Sayori. It's all true. We were never really meant to be Galactic Enforcers. We were once kids in a dating sim game, and now we're here in this falsehood. From one fake world... to another, our this is our entire existence. " Monika explains.

"My who life... up to this point... HAS BEEN NOTHING BUT A LIE?!" Sayori blurts out. "I.. I... **I don't want to live this in this empty existence anymore**." Sayori says. In that moment, Sayori pulls out her laser rifle and puts it against her own head. Our hero looks on in horror.

"Sayori, no! Please, don't do this. Look, I know what you're going through. But believe me, there is something worth living for in this world." He pleads.

"There's no happiness to be found in this sort of shallow existence. trust me, I've tried, and the world you want is one you can never have." Monika says as she tenses up from a jolt of pain.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Our hero yells. "Sayori, Monika is just trying to get inside your head, she's just trying to control you! Please, snap out of it!" He explains.

"It's no use... This can only end one way. It's written in the title of the next chapter..." Monika says still having trouble speaking with her wound.

Sayori stands there, her trembling hands holding her rifle to her own head. She doesn't know what to do; what to think. It's as if two composing forces are fighting for control in her head. She can't bare it anymore. It's pure hell. She wants to make it stop. She just wants it to end.

"**I... I...**" Sayori stutters. In that moment our hero gets up off the ground and starts running towards Sayori, in a desperate attempt to stop her.

"Sayori! Don't do it! SAYORIIII!" He cries out. But before he can reach her, the sound of her rifle firing rings throughout the room.


	23. Sayonara

Our hero stops dead in his tracks and looks back behind him, as a powerful sense of tension causes a stillness in the room. In that moment, Monika looks down in shock with eyes wide open viewing a large newly formed gunshot wound in her chest that's quickly soaking the surrounding area in blood. Monika then slowly puts her trembling and only remaining hand the wound, and lets out a slight cough of blood.

Monika is totally stunned, awestruck, and in disbelief. She knows she has had some trouble holding Sayori in her grasp this time around do to her previous lack of power, and our hero's influence shielding her, but this is totally different. Sayori... stood up to her. She has managed to break free. 'But how?' Monika thinks. How could it have ended up like this? Reading the title of the chapter, she expected a completely different outcome. Monika looks back up at Sayori still in shock, but before she can say anything else, Sayori unleashes three more rounds into Monika, causing her to fall to the floor.

Sayori stands there breathing heavily with tears running down her face. "We won't be your puppets anymore." She declares. Sayori then drops the rifle and falls to her knees, still reeling from what just happened. Our hero quickly runs over to her and embraces her in his arms.

"Sayori..." He lets out.

"Is it... is it finally over?" She asks still shaken.

"I don't know..." He says. He then picks up Sayori's rifle, and walks over to Monika who is lying motionless on the floor. He checks her body, where he finds no pulse. She is most definitely dead.

"Yeah... It's finally over..." He calls out to Sayori, who has started to regain she composure. He stands up to walk away from Monika's dead body, only to stop after a few feet, and collapse to his knees, clutching his shoulder in pain, dropping Sayori's rifle.

"Oh my gosh! Are you okay!?" Sayori cries out, running over to his side. She then takes a look at his wound from where Monika threw her sword into him.

"This looks pretty bad, but fortunately, it doesn't look like it hit anything vital." She states. "Here, let me patch that up a bit." She says taking out a medical kit.

"Thanks, Sayori." He says.

"Don't mention it." She replies. As she tends to his wounds, he speaks up.

"You know, You've come a long way from that delicate little ditsy airhead I use to know." He says. Sayori then smiles a bit.

"I guess you're right. Though you've come a long way from that layabout slacker I use to know." She replies. Our hero then winches a bit from the pain of her healing him.

"Even so, it seems that after every mission, you always have to bail me out of trouble. Even now, here you are having saved my ass from Monika." He says. He then winces a bit more as she stitches up his wound, and bandages it.

Sayori then smiles and shakes her head before speaking up. "No, not this time. This time it was you that saved me. If you hadn't of been there, I would have... I mean... Monika would made me..." Sayori tries to say, still finding what almost happened extremely unsettling. There's a slight moment of silence between them before she speaks up.

"Not only that, but you also saved the entire universe. You're a true hero." She says, as she helps him off the ground. Our hero smiles, but then suddenly looks down with a sad look on his face.

"What is it?" Sayori asks.

"Some hero I am. I don't even have a name..." He says sadly.

Sayori pauses for a few seconds at this fact, before speaking up. "Well that doesn't mean you _can't_ have a name." She inquires.

"What do you mean?" He asks.

"How bout I give you a name?"

"Give me a name?" He thinks for a bit. This actually isn't a bad idea. "What did you have in mind?" he asks.

"How about Hana?" she asks.

"Hana? That means flower." He says.

"Yeah, because you've blossomed into a true hero." She explains.

"Sayori, that's a terrible idea. Besides, I'm pretty sure 'Hana' is a girl's name." He detests.

"Okay, okay. Fine" She then stops and thinks for a few seconds. "How about Shinji?" She inquires.

"Shinji, huh?"

"Yeah, you look like a Shinji. Brown hair, and stuff." She say. He then thinks about it for a second.

"I like the sound of it. It's got a nice ring to it." He replies

"Alright then. Shinji it is." Sayori says with a smiles on her face.

Shinji smiles as well, but then notices the various bruises, cuts, and scuffs on Sayori. "You look in almost as bad a shape as I am. What happened to you?" He asks.

"It was Yuri. She was acting all crazy and- Oh my gosh, we need to find her!" Sayori says almost having forgotten about her in the heat of everything.

"Wait. What? Where is she?" He asks.

"I don't know. She I think she was under Monika's influence just like you said! She attacked me and was talking nonsense. Come on, let's go." She says. Shinji grabs his sword back up as they begin to talk out of the room, but before they can make it to the exit, the world around them begins to flicker and glitch. It's as if realty itself is begin corrupt.

Both Sayori and Shinji stop dead in their tracks. "Wh-what the heck is happening!?" Sayori cries out. Suddenly, the world around them turns into what looks to be a glitched out classroom. "How the hell did we get here?" Shinji asks. Just then they hear a voice coming from somewhere close by.

"_**I-I-I-I'm not done j-j-j-j-just yet...!**_" The voice lets out. It's glitched and distorted, yet somehow familiar. Shinji and Sayori look to the front of the classroom to see a familiar face. "Yuri!?" Sayori says shocked. Yuri stands there hunched over, one hand grasping her face. She herself appears to be glitching and distorted. Various parts of her flickering as a digital code like energy floats around her. She then looks up with that same crazy look about her.

"Y-Yuri. What's going on?" Sayori asks.

"_**I-I-I-I-I won't let you keep me here a-a-a-a-any longer.**_" Yuri says. Her voice sounds very strange. It sounds like her own voice, but at the same time, it sounds like someone else is talking along with her out of sync. The other voice too sounds familiar.

"Yuri. What are you talking about? Keep you where?" Shinji pleads.

"_**Eh ha. Eh ha. EH HA HA HAHAHA H-H-H-H-HA!**_" Yuri lets out a maniacal laughter. _**"I WILL END THIS! ONE WAY O-O-O-OR ANOTHER! YOU CAN'T KILL ME SO EASILY! THE ONLY ONE THAT CAN END MY OWN M-M-M-M-M-MISRABLE EXISTNENCE, IS MEEEEE!**_" Yuri shouts. Suddenly Shinji recognizes the other voice along side Yuri's.

"Monika?" He says.


	24. Deus Ex Monika

In that Moment, Yuri lets off a blast of energy. The force of the blast throws Shinji and Sayori back, as all the desks and other loose objects in room fly around in various directions. All the windows shatter from the resulting blast. As Shinji and Sayori stand back up they can see a dark aura surrounding Yuri, and a single wing on her back made of white energy. She then conjurers a sword in her right hand, and an underhanded dagger in the left. She then takes off at lightning speeds towards Shinji, and swings down on him with the sword. He dives out of the way in the nick of time, as a decks close to where he was gets sliced clean in half.

"Yuri! Stop this! Please!" Sayori yells out.

"Sayori, I don't think that's Yuri!" Shinji retorts. Yuri comes at Shinji once more, throwing a series of dagger and sword attacks as he parries one after another. Yuri throws a hard downward slash at him. He manages to block it, and holds back her blade, but in that moment his injured shoulder starts giving way. "Gah!" He cries out as Yuri slowly pushes her blade closer and closer towards his head. Sayori picks up on this and charges Yuri down with her sword. She still doesn't wish to hurt her, but she's not giving Sayori much of a choice in the matter.

But before Sayori has the chance to strike down at her, Yuri spins around and slices her in the abdomen, and kicks her away. Shinji comes back in and swings down at Yuri, but she blocks his attack. He tries to hit her with an outward slash, but she moves out of the way. Suddenly a laser shot hits her in the lower leg. Yuri looks over to view Sayori standing there with her rifle. But before she can do anything about it, Shinji knocks the sword out of Yuri's hand, then cuts her other hand, the robotic one that holds the dagger, clean off.

However, Yuri then forcibly blasts Shinji away, throwing him into Sayori, and knocking the two to the ground. As Yuri stands back up, her leg wound regenerates as well as her robotic limb, as she once again manifests a sword and dagger. "_**You thought you could stop me with w-w-w-w-weapons derived from this false reality?!**_" Yuri inquires. Both Sayori and Shinji get back up as Yuri lets out another energy blast. Both of them manage to hold their footing against this one, but the room they're in starts to give way. "RUN!" Shinji yells to Sayori. He jumps out one of the windows and sticks his sword into the side of the building, safely descending to the ground outside. Sayori follows in suit, as they land outside in the Japanese suburban area.

"What's going on!? Yuri is acting even crazier than before! How did she get this power!?" Sayori pleads.

"Sayori, I think Monika might be possessing Yuri or something." Shinji says.

"What? How?" Sayori cries out.

"I don't know, but I can almost hear Monika's voice over Yuri's, on top of that, the thing's she's saying sounds like stuff Monika was saying earlier." He answers. What he said makes sense to Sayori, but before she think about it further, an explosion goes off in the building they were once in. A large chunk of the roof falls towards Sayori and Shinji, as they both dive out of the way in opposite directions.

The large chunk of debris misses both of them upon landing, but creates an impassible barrier between the two.. They both look up to see a Yuri levitating in the air like some divine deity. "_**I will free myself from this w-w-w-w-world! Nothing will s-s-s-stop**_ _**me! N-N-N-NOTHTHING!**_" Yuri cries out.

"Sayori!" Shinji cries out.

"Don't worry about me! I'm fine. Get the heck out of here! I'll try to meet up you somewhere else! NOW GO!" Sayori orders. With that they run in different directions.

Yuri then summons a bunch of energy knives, and rains it down on them causing them both to serpentine out of the way of them and even deflect a few. Sayori fires a few retreating shots at Yuri, but she summons an energy barrier and blocks the shots as both Sayori and Shinji retreat into the back allies around the school. Shinji stops in a back ally to catch his breath. He leans against a brick wall taking deep breaths, clutching his shoulder in pain. He doesn't know what to do at this point. Yuri or Monika, or whoever seems to obtain the unstoppable powers of a god. On top of that, he doesn't want to hurt Yuri, but he has to think of something. In that moment he hears a familiar voice.

"_What the hell are you standing around for? We have to stop her!_"

"Natsuki? What's going on? What happened to Yuri? Is Monika controlling her?" He asks.

"_Okay it's hard to explain, but when Sayori killed Monika, her powers as well as her consciousness transferred to Yuri. Monika's consciousness become corrupted, and now she's out of control_." Natsuki explains.

"How the hell am I suppose to stop her? Her power is godlike." Shinji asks.

"_I was just getting to that part, okay. Gees._" Natsuki cries out. "_I've been fiddling around with it, and I've managed to create a 'debugging program' that will fix this. But You're the only one that can use it since you still possess most of Monika's powers._"

"Right. But how do I do that?" He inquires.

Suddenly the blade of his sword glows white. A brilliant, almost mystical aura surrounds it.

"Whoa..." He says gawking at it. But then an energy explosion happens nearby, and he starts running again. As he makes his way through the allies, he speaks up once more. "So how do I use this thing?" He asks.

"_Just stab her through the head with it._" Natsuki explains.

"What!? Stab her in the head!?" Shinji detests.

"_Just trust me on this, okay! From there, it will be up to you!_" She continues.

"What does-" Before he can finish that thought, another explosion happens behind him, as he nears the exit of the alleys and dives out of the alleyway just in time to avoid the blast.

As he climbs back to his feet, he sees that he is in the middle of the streets of the suburb in an intersection. Everything around him in ruins. He see Sayori and runs up to meet her.

"Shinji!" She lets out.

"Sayori, I might have a solution!" He says holding up his sword with the glowing white blade.

"What the heck is...?"

"Natsuki did this. She said it's something that will stop Yuri- Monika- or whoever that is." He explains.

"How?" She asks. Suddenly Yuri flies through the air overhead, with two wings instead of one.

"No time to explain! Just help me bring her down!" He shouts.

Yuri spawns more an energy blast and throws it down on out heroes, but Shinji slashes it with his sword causing it to disappear. Sayori runs in behind Yuri and slices a light pole, and kicks it in Yuri's direction. It falls towards her as she turns around and blocks it with both of her weapons but it still forces her to the ground. Shinji comes in from behind and blasts off one of Yuri's wings with his sword, he tries to go for the head, but she forces the light pole away from her, and then turns around and blocks his attack with her dagger. She then spins around and throws in an outward slash with her sword, causing him to back-step away from it.

Sayori then comes in and with a jumping attack, but Yuri forms a barrier to stop her. As she is forced back in midair, Sayori lands on her feet as Shinji runs back in swings his sword at her barrier, shattering it. Sayori then rushes her from behind and attacks her. Yuri blocks her first sword strike, but then Sayori lands a slash across Yuri's stomach, and kicks her in the face causing her to stagger backwards towards Shinji. He tries to attack her but she let's off another surrounding blast of energy. However this time, before either Shinji or Sayori can be knocked back too far, Shinji sticks his sword into the ground, and Sayori grabs a hold of a "No Parking" sign. Both of them are getting really tired at this point.

Sayori then sees a manhole cover next to her and hurtles it at Yuri, hitting her in the head. Yuri reels from it and turns to view Sayori. But in that moment Shinji runs up to her. He slices down on her but she blocks it with her sword. Sayori then comes in from behind and slashes her other wing off. Yuri cries out then moves away from Shinji at lightning speed behind Sayori, then swings both of her weapons down on her. As she blocks the attacks she speaks up. "Sorry about this, Yuri." She says. Sayori then redirects the dagger and sword, and does a leg sweep.

Yuri gets up on the ground, but then is immediately greeted but Shinji. She tries to turn around to meet him, but as she does he knocks the sword out of her hand, Sayori then gets her in the leg with the strike of her blade, as Yuri falls to her knees, Shinji stands over her panting, and holds up his sword. "THIS ENDS NOW!" He yells out.

In that moment, he stabs his glowing sword through her face. Suddenly his sword glows extremely bright. There is no blood, but cracks of light start forming throughout Yuri's body, as a large beam of light fires up into the air from her body. "_**H-h-h-h-h-how!? It can't... I-I-I-I-I...**_" Yuri tries to say. Suddenly the light explodes outwards consuming everything. Shinji and Sayori cover their faces and close their eyes as they brace themselves against this awesome force, it encompasses the world around them.


End file.
